Most email programs today, including the majority of the webmail clients available, offer a feature where users can include a signature with each email that is sent. For the most part, people use this signature option to include their name, contact information, and in many cases a quote of some sort.

While this is useful in many situations, there are also a lot of situations where it is unnecessary. Personally, I do not use a signature when sending email. The person I am emailing will probably be getting back to me via email and since I am sending them an email they can use the reply option to respond. If the request or situation merits contact by other means I do not find it much of a hassle to include additional contact information either in the body of or at the end of the email.

The biggest drawback to including a signature with each email you send is that when you and the recipient begin corresponding via email using the reply function (which is preferred by most people) the emails become larger than they need to be. In some cases, there may be more text in the signature than the message.

As a brighter note, because it is entirely electronic and most (but not all) signatures include only text, there is not a lot of paper, memory, or ink wasted. If one party or the other has reason to print the correspondence, there will be an additional amount of paper and ink used due to the signatures. Text does not take much memory or bandwidth so there is not much drawback there.

Another positive aspect of the signatures on emails is that when replying to an email, the newest addition is at the top so it does not cause an unnecessary amount of scrolling to get past. However, unless you only send emails for business purposes (which most people don’t) and to people that do not already have the information they need to contact you, you probably don’t need to use the signature function of your email client.