Were Stephen Dedalus living in the era of e-mail, he would have an elegant if longish signature file. Here is what he has written on the flyleaf of his geography book:
Stephen DedalusIn the real world, lengthy signature files on in-house e-mails always strike me as failures of tone: there's no need, really, to announce ourselves to each other in these ways. We already know who we are. The most extravagant example I've seen (not from my workplace): twenty-two lines, with seven URLs. No doubt that person's e-mails are really important.
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
I like our lengthy legal disclaimer, which I've never seen included in written letters.
ReplyDeleteHere's a useful discussion of such stuff -- clickwrap, shrinkwrap, and browserwrap.
ReplyDeleteThere does seem to be a relationship between the imagined self-importance of the emailer and the length of the signature block. I have a friend who always leaves his ten line block on even personal emails. Of course, it IS ten lines because the block has to be all bilingual. But really.
ReplyDeleteThe bi- or trilingual approach might be a good standard practice for important persons, as with so much packaging: tea, té, thé.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, oftentimes IT has programmed legal disclaimers to be added automatically, so the individual has no control.
ReplyDelete"In fairness, oftentimes IT has programmed legal disclaimers to be added automatically": a friend and I were just talking about that. I'd want to distinguish between those disclaimers and personal signature files.
ReplyDelete