I see those signatures as rather excessive, perhaps archaic: headers already make it clear from whom the message is, it's clear where it ends, and most people h

I see those signatures as rather excessive, perhaps archaic: headers already make it clear from whom the message is, it's clear where it ends, and most people have personal email addresses. Worse yet, the most common practice seems to be to auto-attach a long signature -- some combination of one's name, title, contact information, organization logo, Apple and antivirus software advertisements -- to a message that was composed carelessly and seemingly very quickly. Slapping "Yours sincerely" onto that wouldn't really improve how it looks to the reader (at least when the reader is me), would rather make it look even more like spam. It probably would look nice in a well-written email, as a fitting decoration, but otherwise I find those to be closer to misplaced decorations. Though as decorations go, a more modern way would be to M-x spook [1] (edit: to be clear, that's a joke about M-x spook). Some people skip greetings too, particularly in IMs, and I think that makes sense as well: a greeting is actually useful in speech, even more so over a phone (or some other unreliable channel, especially when you don't see the other person), but doesn't seem to be useful in a textual message (though some use it as a ping, and some are unhappy about such usage too). [1] Flood China Eco terrorism Mudslide Organized crime S Box BBE press-release smuggle Atlas CIO Drug war Sundevil IED CCC