The Perfect Foam

Who sent me that email?!

Changing gears a little from my spiritual sports extravaganza that was last Thursday, I thought I would go on a little rant.  About the stock market, about another potential government bailout, about my 401k you might be thinking?  Oh no, something far more personal actually.  The all important issue of the way we choose to sign our emails.

I believe I first started to experience the annoyance that is the one letter email signature a few years ago when I noticed that a friend of mine was signing his emails simply with the letter “D”.  Or even worse, sometimes with the lower case version “d”.  Since then I have noticed that a large portion of the emails I get end with one letter.  I sometimes even have to double check the sent from email address to remember who sent me the email.  This of course doesn’t help when the email address has no part of the person’s name in it, ala AOL screen names!

Are people really that lazy or in that much of a rush that after getting through writing an entire email (mind you that some of these emails aren’t only one liners), they can’t simply spell out their names?  It’s actually quite mind-boggling.  Maybe it’s the result of the mighty Blackberry (I think I made my thoughts on the this matter very clear) taking over lives left and right.  I don’t know.  Whatever the reason may be, I don’t think I’ll like it!

May I propose a few simple rules for emailing:

1. You must at lease use the full version of the name that your friends call you.
2. You may use any number of nicknames, provided that whomever you are emailing is also familiar with the nickname.
3. You may only use a single letter as your signature if that is one of your nicknames (in which case, I would suggest that you become a little more creative).
4. You must otherwise refrain from using a one letter signature.

I hope that helps clarify.