[Gllug] Signatures

[Rev Simon Rumble]

On Wed 10 Jul, t.clarke made the following spurious claims:

> In a business environment (eg: me !), I would argue that an email is the
> electronic equivalent of a letter. And as we all know, letters are typed
> on 'letterheads' with a name/address and telephone number at the top and
> a signature (ie simple name of the writer) at the foot.

But with a letterhead the "address" bits are in different type and
seperated from the main body of the letter, so it's easy to
distinguish between them and focus on the content.  On emails you have
no control over how readers view the message, so some people (like me)
might see only the address details and the first line or two before
having to page down to read the body.

In addition, the role of headers is to serve as the place for this
information.  Hell, the name is even the same as the top bit of a
letter's page!

In general, email addresses are only included in footer signatures in
case the email somehow gets seperated from its headers.  Unfortunately
braindead tools like MS Outlook do this routinely when people forward
your message.

> Besides which, if you need the 'sig' to include some sort of disclaimer
> (not that I personally believe in including ten tons* of legal gobbledeygook)
> *sorry tonnes, then it should be at the top so the recipient reads it BEFORE
> the text of the messages.    For example, whats the point of saying, as I
> have seen, at the foot, "do not read this if you are not the intend recipient" !

Yes I think we're all mostly in agreement about the futility of email
disclaimers.

ObNitPick: There is a difference between a ton and a tonne.  1 ton ==
1.0160 tonne.

-- 
Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net>
www.rumble.net
Send email with subject "send key pub" for public key.

Grub first, then ethics.
- Bertolt Brecht
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