I mentioned last time that I occasionally volunteer to teach an email class, and it has led to all sorts of laughter at my expense. However, there's a new twist to the story now.
One of the things we talk about during the class is an email signature. We use them all the time at work, since typing your name and title gets old. People also tend to prefer to include contact information there, since it might be easier for someone to call you than to reply to the email. All in all, it makes sense. On top of that, the email program we use makes it pretty easy, so everyone tends to just slap a signature on the bottom of their emails.
In my personal life, I don't tend to do this very often. I always just slap my name on the bottom of my emails, because that person clearly has my email. If I want that person to have my phone number, I will give it to them by some other means (usually they just ask me and I say, "it's XXX-XXXX"). In other words, I have no real reason to include anything but my name in the signature. So, I don't bother with a signature.
Well, I didn't bother with one. One of the things that I try to do with that email class is to actually demonstrate how to do the things I'm teaching. I wouldn't ask you to do anything I can't or wouldn't do myself, in other words. So, when we got to the topic of email signatures, I created a very simple signature for my personal email (it was just my name). Everyone got the gist of it, and they were able to create signatures of their own. All was right in the world.
Then I sent an email. I typed up the email, and then, out of pure habit, I added my name to the bottom of that email. I have been doing that for years, and the muscle memory kicked in. I didn't think twice about it, and I hit send. Remember how I had added an email signature, though? That particular email went out with the automatically-added signature, plus the one that I had manually added. I'm pretty sure that looked weird to the person who received that email.
Worse yet, the email program I use (Gmail) will automatically hide the automatically-added signature when you're typing a reply. So unless I actively remind myself that there's already a signature there, I will happily add it in again by hand. I have sent out several emails that way in the last couple of weeks, and it's killing me. Each time I do, the part of my brain that likes to have things neat and orderly has a little spasm. I'm going to have to get over this habit, quickly.
As it is, though, I've started to remember that there's already a signature there. Unfortunately, I don't remember consistently. So, I'm at the stage where I realize there's an issue, but I don't quite have the habit down the way I'd like. As I'm discovering, email is a fickle master.
One of the things we talk about during the class is an email signature. We use them all the time at work, since typing your name and title gets old. People also tend to prefer to include contact information there, since it might be easier for someone to call you than to reply to the email. All in all, it makes sense. On top of that, the email program we use makes it pretty easy, so everyone tends to just slap a signature on the bottom of their emails.
In my personal life, I don't tend to do this very often. I always just slap my name on the bottom of my emails, because that person clearly has my email. If I want that person to have my phone number, I will give it to them by some other means (usually they just ask me and I say, "it's XXX-XXXX"). In other words, I have no real reason to include anything but my name in the signature. So, I don't bother with a signature.
Well, I didn't bother with one. One of the things that I try to do with that email class is to actually demonstrate how to do the things I'm teaching. I wouldn't ask you to do anything I can't or wouldn't do myself, in other words. So, when we got to the topic of email signatures, I created a very simple signature for my personal email (it was just my name). Everyone got the gist of it, and they were able to create signatures of their own. All was right in the world.
Then I sent an email. I typed up the email, and then, out of pure habit, I added my name to the bottom of that email. I have been doing that for years, and the muscle memory kicked in. I didn't think twice about it, and I hit send. Remember how I had added an email signature, though? That particular email went out with the automatically-added signature, plus the one that I had manually added. I'm pretty sure that looked weird to the person who received that email.
Worse yet, the email program I use (Gmail) will automatically hide the automatically-added signature when you're typing a reply. So unless I actively remind myself that there's already a signature there, I will happily add it in again by hand. I have sent out several emails that way in the last couple of weeks, and it's killing me. Each time I do, the part of my brain that likes to have things neat and orderly has a little spasm. I'm going to have to get over this habit, quickly.
As it is, though, I've started to remember that there's already a signature there. Unfortunately, I don't remember consistently. So, I'm at the stage where I realize there's an issue, but I don't quite have the habit down the way I'd like. As I'm discovering, email is a fickle master.
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