Email Signature Dos and Don'ts (The Honest Guide)

Your email signature appears at the bottom of every message you send. If it's good, it goes unnoticed in the best way, people find your phone number when they need it and move on. If it's bad, it actively makes you look less credible. Here's what actually separates the two.

The Dos

✓ Keep it short

Four to five lines is the sweet spot. Name, title, company, one phone number, one website or LinkedIn. That's it. People aren't reading your signature, they're scanning it when they need something specific.

✓ Make your name slightly larger

Your name should visually stand out from the rest. 14–16px bold while the rest is 12px creates the right hierarchy without looking designed-by-committee.

✓ Use a web-safe font

Arial, Helvetica, Georgia, and Times New Roman are safe choices. They render consistently in every email client. Custom fonts will just fall back to Arial anyway, so there's no point specifying them. See our email signature font guide for more on this.

✓ Include your phone number only if people call you

If you're in a role where you take calls, include the number. If you never want phone calls, leave it out. A phone number implies "call me", which isn't always what you want.

✓ Link to something useful

Your website, your LinkedIn profile, or a "book a meeting" link, one link is enough. It should serve a practical purpose: either helping people learn about you or making it easy to get in touch.

✓ Update it when things change

Your old phone number, your old title, a company you no longer work for, these are embarrassing in a subtle way. Set a calendar reminder every six months to check your signature.

✓ Test it in multiple email clients

Send a test to a Gmail account and an Outlook account before rolling it out. These two clients have the most different rendering engines. If it looks right in both, you're covered. See our size guide for the dimensions that work across both.

The Don'ts

✗ Don't use inspirational quotes

This comes up in every email signature guide because it keeps happening. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" under your name and title actively makes you look less professional, not more thoughtful. The only exception might be a niche creative industry where it genuinely fits your brand, but even then, think twice.

✗ Don't add "sent from my iPhone"

Or any device signature. If your email client adds this automatically, go into settings and remove it. It tells people you couldn't be bothered to delete the default text, which isn't the impression you want.

✗ Don't include your email address

They're already emailing you. They have your address. Including it in the signature is redundant and takes up space that could be empty (which is better).

✗ Don't use five social media icons

A row of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube icons looks like you're trying too hard. Pick one or two platforms that are actually relevant to your professional identity and link to those. For most office workers, that's LinkedIn only.

✗ Don't use a background color behind your signature

Some people add a colored banner or block to make their signature "stand out." It usually just makes the email thread look messy, especially in a long reply chain where the same colored block appears 12 times.

✗ Don't skip alt text on images

Many email clients block images by default, especially in corporate environments. If your signature is entirely image-based (a single image of your name and details), it appears blank for a large portion of your recipients. Use HTML text for the content, with images only for logos or headshots.

✗ Don't animate anything

Animated GIFs in email signatures look unprofessional and don't render correctly in many clients anyway. They distract from your actual message.

✗ Don't add "CAUTION: External Email" notices yourself

These are added automatically by corporate IT systems and they're ugly. If your personal email signature includes one of these, check how it got there and remove it if you can.

The Grey Areas

Headshots: sometimes

A small professional headshot (60–80px) works well in customer-facing roles: real estate, consulting, sales, coaching. For internal corporate email or technical roles, it usually looks out of place, so skip it unless your industry norms say otherwise.

Pronouns: depends on context

Many people include their pronouns in their signature. It's genuinely useful information and increasingly common. Whether you do this depends on your personal preference and workplace culture, not some universal rule.

Legal disclaimers: only when required

If your company requires a legal disclaimer, include it and make the font small (9–10px). If it's not required, skip it, the disclaimers that say "this email is confidential" are legally unenforceable anyway, and they just add length.