A
one to
n line
ascii file which is appended to the end of
email messages by
mail programs such as
Pine. Typically contains such
information on the
sender as
name,
email,
homepage, often a
ham radio callsign, a
MBTI and sometimes a full
postal address or other such
location identifier.
Suits may choose to include the most impressive version of their
job title and
corporate identity here. A short
irreverent tagline,
fortune, or other
cookie is often included.
Unix users have historically tended to store this information in a file called .signature, which lead to it being referred to as either a "dot signature" or "sig file." Seasoned Internet users will find, with a few notable exceptions, that the experience and credibility of a correspondent tends to be inversely proportional to the number of lines in their signature.