Your last impression, as the sages tell us, is your lasting impression. Nowhere is this truer than the digital world, where email signatures — the little phrases or miscellanea that sit under each message proper — leave a particular taste in the mouth. You can file these flavours under the good, the bad and the baffling. (And the deadly; but we’ll get to that.)
Let’s start with the good. One of my semi-regular contacts ends their missives by highlighting the book they’re currently reading. That’s a touch a rampant bibliophile can get behind. It allows me to coo ‘Aha, that looks like something I should add to the to-be-read pile’, or sneer at their taste as midwit piffle.
Either way, thanks to that signoff I can confirm that chap, one I’ve been acquainted with digitally for years but will likely never meet, is a fellow book-lover. Our messages are friendly, but always about work. We will never speak on the phone (does anyone, nowadays?) or hit each other up on social. If it weren’t for his minor personal touch, I’d know not a smidgen about him personally.
Whether they’re crafted by your landlord or a Silicon Valley titan, then, email sigs are valuable identifiers. A modern yuppie’s version of a lower back tattoo they may be. But they also offer valuable psychological real estate — a chance to flash our personality just for a moment; a pixelated mood ring for the polycrisis age.
Having said that, some examples do tend to grate. Some contacts I’ve known have crowbarred their star sign into emails, declaiming that they’re a Gemini, or avoiding big changes now that Mercury is in retrograde… And at one period, supposed professionals I worked with would end snippy work emails with ‘love and light xx’. These are the messages I must handle with care, because I’m likely to roll my eyes so hard I give myself an aneurysm. Ditto for those who’ve coined their own corporate version of Live Laugh Love, like ‘Crushing goals and living large.’ (Surely it would be quicker to just end each mail with PS: I’m a twat?) These are exactly the kind of windbags who a decade ago would insist on strumming their acoustic guitar at flat parties, crooning some Springsteen ‘to liven up the vibe’.
Other digital citizens, as a recent piece in the Times notes, use email endnotes as a space to share diagnoses. Disclaimers like ‘My email style can feel a bit direct for some. We’re all good, it’s just AuDHD (autism and ADHD)’ are now common. While some decry this as needless soapbox-ery, I say: what’s the harm? Why would I mind someone thoughtfully clarifying their writing style, as they’re worried their tonality might jar? Frankly, I wish more people would jump on the bandwagon with such honesty: ‘Sorry my notes feel abrupt — am dealing with the crippling malaise of being a 21st century wage slave who will never be able to afford a house.’ ‘Emails this week may feature typos, as I’m re-binging The Sopranos and drinking heavily.’
After all, signatures have always been spaces to end with a blast of honesty or cheeky flourish. Emily Dickinson once concluded a note ‘With the sincere spite of a woman,’ a mic drop so electrifying I’d use it myself, if my pronouns weren’t he/him. Frankly, in a perfect world, employees everywhere would vote on what non-negotiable signature their colleagues should have branded to the end of each missive. ‘Please note the above dickish tone perfectly encapsulates what I’m like in actual meetings, minus the spitting,’ say. Or ‘Reminder: you will not receive a timely reply to messages, as I’m busy trying to coin the phrase Don’t I-nnovate. Let’s We-nnovate — together.’
Back to the world of actual signoffs, and we see they often reveal the inverse of what’s intended. In the same way that the offices who bang on the loudest about being ‘a family’ are about as friendly as the Cosa Nostra, emailers who finish with a quote on ‘humble leadership’ are the most likely to act like graduates from the Himmler School of Management.
I particularly rankle at signoffs reminding me that ‘Emails create a carbon footprint too. Think before you send. Pause before you print. #HailGaia.’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for environmental awareness. But these people, inevitably, are the well-meaning windbags who need ten messages exchanged to confirm the smallest of decisions. I’d love to reply by telling them their short addendum has a fatal cost, but alas in firing off my note I’d be adding to the problem: every added pixel, after all, requires additional energy. The results of a recent study by the University of Western Ontario ‘showed that in Canada, where about 15 per cent of people include gender pronouns in emails, the resulting carbon emissions from this small change (three extra words) may contribute to the premature death of one person a year,’ because of the added fossil fuels pumped into the atmosphere.
Annoying, pointless or unsustainable though many signoffs may be, I admit I’ve grown ever more fond of them. In a world where during some working days we barely interact with real people, email sigs at least tell us something about our digital penpals — even if it’s, ‘This is a mega-prat, the likes of whom I hope never to encounter IRL’.
So yes. End your note with a humble bulletpoint list of your accreditations. Conclude with the fact you’re running a 10K to end the scourge of adult halitosis. Misquote Maya Angelou. We’ll likely never meet, but at least I can imagine a pulsing, gloriously imperfect human at the other end of the screen. Day by day, that’s becoming quite the luxury.
Sent from my iPhone.
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