Language and the Internet

104 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

(1)

... so I hope to hear from you soon.
Dr James Smith
333 Some Street, Somewhere, POSTCODE, UK
Tel:...

(2)

... so I hope to hear from you soon.
James Smith
Dr James Smith
333 Some Street, Somewhere, POSTCODE, UK
Tel:...

(3)

... so I hope to hear from you soon.
JS
Dr James Smith
333 Some Street, Somewhere, POSTCODE, UK
Tel:...

Automatic signatures are inserted by the mailer software, using text
created by the sender and stored in a file. They can be quite com-
ple xpieces of writing, though the usage manuals consider lengthy
signature files wasteful of time and space. Some consist simply of a
person’s full name (perhaps with title and qualifications), address,
andcommunicationdetails(phone,fax,e-mail,website).Someadd
a character note, often framed typographically (commonly within
asterisks), such as a slogan, logo, favourite quotation, piece of per-
sonal promotion, or even a ‘picture’ (constructed out of keyboard
symbols).^13 For some reason I receive few e-mails from people who
go in for slogans and quotations, but when they do occur they all
followthenameandaretypographicallydistinguishedinsomeway:

James Smith ∗AVENUES TO SUCCESS∗[i.e. the title of a

conference]

(^13) Sometimes referred to as ‘ASCII art’. On Internet impression formation, see Wallace
(1999: ch. 2).