Standard Sig Delimiter

[EmailNetiquettePatterns]

Internet signatures in mail and news should begin with the character sequence

  DASH DASH SPACE EOL

For example

  -- 
  James Hacker <jrh@ge.com>,
  Electron Polisher, General Eclectic Corporation

Context:

The signature is part of the message, but also less important than the content itself. It's often the same from one message to another, and deeply-nested messages look ugly when repeated signatures are redundantly quoted.

The solution must work in plain text, and feel natural to people new to email.

Solution:

Mark the start of the signature as described above, and follow with whatever you like within the SixLineSigLimit.

Resulting Context:

Smart user agents (e.g. mutt) can do nice things such as showing signatures in a different color, and more importantly truncating them when replying.

The solution is so small and discreet that many people don't realize there is a convention here at all.

References:

RequestForComments 1855 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html)