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All you have to do is prepare your signature in advance -- you do this once and you're done with it.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

How to make an e-mail signature


August 18, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   I like my sigs. I have two, one for letters I write at home and one for letters I write at the office.
   This foreign-sounding word is computer jargon for "signature." Like most terms computer geeks invented, it doesn't mean what it seems.
   In e-mail, a signature is more than your name. It's more like a business card than a John Hancock. It tells the recipient who you are and how to reach you, and it adds any other information you want to include. A true geek puts a literate quotation in the signature, too.
   Signatures get in the way if they are too long. I've received e-mail letters that would be only a few works long -- something like "OK, let's meet at noon" -- were it not for the sigs at the end. In some cases, signatures on letters I get are hundreds of words long.
   So keep your sig short. There's no sense annoying people you send mail to.
   Most modern e-mail programs take care of the hardest job. They type your signature for you. All you have to do is prepare your signature in advance -- you do this once and you're done with it -- and the rest is handled by your software. When you mail off the letter, your signature appears automatically.
   In Windows software, Netscape Messenger, Eudora, Outlook 98, Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express are among the mail programs that will automatically put a signature into your letters. (My current favorite Windows e-mail software, The Bat!, does this also, along with a zillion other features you should look into. Read about it at http://twcny.rr.com/technofile/texts/bit062800.html,)
   Usually, you'll find the menu for creating or changing your signature under the Options, Preferences or Tools menu in your mail software. If you don't see it right away, don't waste your time looking. Just open the Help menu and type "signature" (without quotation marks) into the search form in your Help menu. You should be able to get information right away.
   Your e-mail program probably sends and receives HTML mail. HTML is the programming language for Web pages. If you're able to look at e-mail letters and see Web-type items in them, your mail software does HTML.
   Most modern e-mail programs do, in fact, on all three popular operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux). That means your signature can contain hyperlinks, as you might suspect. But it also means your signature can have large and small type (called fonts), boldface and italic type and even an image. (Yes, your signature can show your mug shot or a picture of your dog, but please don't do this. Images sent with every letter make your mail files larger and probably will make recipients
   You don't even have to learn HTML coding to create a signature that has all these features. Most modern e-mail software automatically creates hyperlinks when you type a Web address or type something that HTML handles. This might not seem to work in your signature, but it actually does.
   Here's how to find out.
   Write a letter to yourself. Put a Web address in the letter. Type this address if you can't think of one: http://www.wolfwebshops.com/. (That's the Web site run by Gene Wolf, my radio partner. It has a standard-looking form of address, so your mail software -- if it handles HTML at all -- should be able to figure out what it is.)
   Send the letter to yourself. When you get the letter back, see if the Web address has been turned into a hyperlink. It should be underlined and in a different color (probably blue) if your mail software created a hyperlink out of the Web address.
   If you got a hyperlink back, you're in luck. Create a signature and put that same address in it, below your name Send a letter to yourself again and see if your signature contains a hyperlink. If it does, all you need to do to add hyperlinks to your signature is to type the addresses. You should be able to add boldface and italic text, too, just by marking them that way. Your software probably has menu choices or toolbar buttons for this, but I usually try Ctrl-B for bold and Ctrl-I for italic. That often works. (Mac users might need to use another modifier key.)
   You can get a lot fancier making HTML signatures. I'll show you some tricks in a future column.