Over It: Your E-mail Signature Is Totally Pretentious

Welcome back to Over It, the occasional feature that consists of a UTB contributor ranting about something they are so totally over.

Over the past year or so, we've noticed an insidious element creeping into e-mails from our peers: first it was just a line or two at the end of a message, something like "Joe Studentstein, Penn '09."  But over time, it grew to include phone numbers and other contact information, eventually reaching its current state of bloatedness: a block of text that includes as much information as a resume, sometimes finished off with the ever-loathsome "Sent from my iPhone."  We'd like to just point out the obvious and say that interminable signatures are pretentious.

We know you're going to use long, toolish signatures when applying for jobs and stuff, but in your day-to-day casual e-mailing, please spare us the listing of your "mobile" phone number and the fact that you're a member of Penn's save the whales advocacy group (Penn4FreeWilly | Secretary, in fact).  A simple class year and unlabeled phone number (we can all guess what 10 digits in a row signifies) will usually do the trick.  And you should avoid including a quote in your signature.  But if something compels you to do so, you should never, ever, quote one of your professors in an e-mail to that professor and the rest of your class, as we once saw a classmate so egregiously do.

Signed,

UTB Ranter and Angry Person | UnderTheButton.com University of Pennsylvania | Class of 2009 E-mail: underthebutton@gmail.com Mobile: (215) you wish "A small leak can sink a great ship." -Benjamin Franklin