Technology in terms you understand. Sign up for the Confident Computing newsletter for weekly solutions to make your life easier. Click here and get The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe on the Internet — FREE Edition as my thank you for subscribing!

How do you put your signature at the end of every newsletter?

Question:

Do you put your signatures on newsletters in some special way as it reads as
if the signatures have been on a sheet of paper?

In this excerpt from Answercast #88 I show how I put my signature in each
newsletter so it looks like I signed it.

]]>

Signature at the end of newsletter

Actually, it’s really simple. I took a “picture” of my signature.

In this particular case, I took a scan of my signature and converted that scan into a picture. It’s a jpeg (I think it’s a jpeg; it might be a png) but it’s a jpeg just like any other picture.

It just happens to be a pure black and white picture that matches me having written out my first name.

Picture of signature in email

So that’s really all it is. If you take a look at my article “How do I put a picture into a body of an email?” that’s pretty much the exact same steps I’m taking here. Obviously in the newsletter I’m doing it in more of a production environment, since I’m doing this twice a week, but the bottom line is it is nothing more than a picture in an email.

Leo

(Transcript lightly edited for readability.)

Do this

Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.

I'll see you there!

7 comments on “How do you put your signature at the end of every newsletter?”

  1. That works in an email or word processing where you can space things, but how do you add a signature to a form? If you have a pic, it would cover lines and possibly other wording unless the signature was the exact right size and none of your signature went below the sig line.

    Reply
  2. Lynn,

    What you need is an image format (such as PNG) which supports “transparency”. Basically, rather than the image having a solid color as a background (which would cover anything under the image), the background is transparent, and anything under it shows through. (Just like a clear sheet of plastic on which you have drawn something.)

    See, for example, the images at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics

    Reply
  3. @Lynn,
    The only way you could put a picture in a form you are submitting is if the author of the form (the web designer) enabled HTML. Then you would have to have the image online someplace, and know the code to submit it.

    Reply
  4. Yup, I thought that this would be pretty swish, so I did a TIFF which looked like my best signature only-better; but it struck me that this could then be lifted-off by anyone who didn’t have my best interests at heart, and used for other motives; so I scrubbed the whole lot of them (there were a half-dozen or so).

    Reply
  5. The issue of worrying about someone “lifting” your signature is a valid concern, but they could that with access to anything that has your signature, original or pasted. I often insert my signature on letters and document, and then send the recipient a password protected PDF version of the communication. We have to realize that there really is no real fail-safe security in cyberspace nor the real world unless you simply decide to be a part of neither.

    Reply

Leave a reply:

Before commenting please:

  • Read the article.
  • Comment on the article.
  • No personal information.
  • No spam.

Comments violating those rules will be removed. Comments that don't add value will be removed, including off-topic or content-free comments, or comments that look even a little bit like spam. All comments containing links and certain keywords will be moderated before publication.

I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.