Email signature fail == facepalm

I don’t know why I let it bother me. But a couple things about email and how people use it really annoy me. Deeply and profoundly. I don’t know why it eats me so, but I really wish I could just let the damn pet peeve go.

First, stationary. Seriously? Stationary? Has our world devolved to the point that you need to make your email pretty? Seriously?!? Your stationary just makes your email harder to read and larger in size to boot. Stationary sucks. Don’t use it. It is ugly and I do not like having everything indented to the right by 6 tabs when I am trying to read a thread. We do not live in a world of Victorian values. Stationary should be reserved to the world of paper and snail mail. Use your fancy paper with your fancy calligraphy pens and your stamps. Email is email. Digital. That shit is just plain superfluous.

Second, email signatures. The company I work for is insisting that we have a consistent email signature. This I don’t necessarily have a problem with (besides bugging a ton of users, and just saddling IT with the duty to explain why). The problem I have is that the brand manager designed the sig. So it is huge, contains images, and has dead space. My sig on a standard resolution screen takes about a half an inch of vertical space in a thread. The header of an email (the date, to, from and subject) generally takes about 3/4″ on a reply or forward. This “standardized” email sig is 3.5 inches in height and 4.5 inches in width. And its JUST A SIGNATURE! Gah! Instead of signed, blah, blah, blah. It’s signed, image, space, blah, space, blah, space, space, blah, space blah, and a legal notice. Which segues into my next point…

Lastly, legal notices on email. Come on world, everyone is so gun shy about possible legal offense. Email is a nonspecific, nonguaranteed delivery method. The SMTP RFC (which is what email is), does not guarantee delivery, nor does it guarantee correct routing. It is a “best effort” protocol. It tries to deliver the message. If it can’t or it happens to go to the wrong place, that is something you cannot hold someone who received the message liable for. The only legal ground you could have against an accidental receiver is if they misuse that information in obvious nonlegal ways. Which, um, are already against the law. So don’t add 6 sentences telling me how to handle my email. Any party that receives an email unwittingly cannot be bound by confidentiality or any conditions that they did not accept. I can do whatever I want with the info I received, however I want to. If I want to print it out and wipe my butt with it, I can. You cannot, by the nature of the technology, regulate the explicit distribution. All you need is a link in an email to a corporate policy page on the net that covers any information misuse in any form. That’s it, that’s all. Misuse through any and all methods should be covered in your information policy, just not email. So stop the email legal disclaimers which are obviously a sign your company is brain dead. Please. Until email is completely redesigned or has some 3rd party delivery method that guarantees routing and delivery, with both parties agreeing to terms, legalese on your email threads is just plain dumb.

Come on.