Have you ever noticed the dashes before a signature? "-- " (two hyphens, a space, and a line break) on a line by itself. They are known as sig dashes, signature cut line and sig-marker. This is the first line of a signature. Entourage automatically includes the sig dashes when you create a signature using Signatures under Tools in the menu bar.
Example of a signature with standard delimiter:
--
Diane Ross
The Entourage Help Blog
What’s the purpose of a sig block? The sig block allows your email or news application to automatically mark and remove the sig block in replies.
Why remove my sig? When you reply to an email or news message, the sender is shown in the attribution. Including the signature in the message text is unnecessary. In discussion lists, a thread can get long and with signatures left in the replies it makes ever-lengthening tails of extraneous text in the message.
If you’re interested in creating a signature approved by Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval (GNKSA) follow these steps:
- Use a signature delimiter
- Limit your sig to 5 lines (includes your sig delmiter)
- Follow the McQuary limit 4 lines of at most 80 characters each
For tips on creating netiquette friendly signatures, be sure to read Appropriate Signatures.
In summary, keep your signatures short and simple. Don’t make them annoying, cutsie personal spam.
Comments (6)
GNKSA says that 4 lines is a common limit. Some News clients even enforce this hard limit.
Although this seems simple enough, and MS Entourage even adds by default, I have never been able to get this feature to work in any version of MS Entourage 2004.
Am I missing something?
Thanks.
- Geoff
Entourage Signatures open with the default. Be sure to add below the line with two hyphens.
If your sig is like that above, then you are not following the directions.
two hyphens, a space, and a line break on a line by itself.
You should have
--
Geoff
Not...
- Geoff
Believe me when I tell you I have tried the default, two hyphens, a space, and a return on many occasions - usually whenever an update to MS Entourage comes out - and have never had any success.
Because of the feature not working I don't bother including it thus the reason for my signature not following the directions.
Hi, I have created a signature in Entourage, but I am not sure how to setup the signature so that it automatically appears with each new email I create. Can someone help me setup my signature so that it will automatically appear in all new emails without me having to manually select to insert it. Thanks, Yvonne yvonnesd@cox.net
Under Tools in the Menu Bar, select Accounts. Click on the Options tab. There is a popup where you can select the Default signature.