Some Basics: Email Address and Signature Etiquette
Annie Rohan, PhD, RN, FAANP, FAAN
Writer’s Camp Counselor
Leslie H. Nicoll, PhD, MBA, RN, FAAN
Writer’s Camp Director
Abstract
The content discusses essential email etiquette for professionals, particularly authors and editors. Key points include the importance of using a simple, professional email address, maintaining consistency in contact details, creating a clear signature with necessary credentials, and ensuring attention to formatting. Adhering to these standards enhances communication and reflects professionalism.
To achieve professional “netiquette,” you must know standards and courtesies related to email.
Writing and responding to professional email requires the ability to develop clear and succinct message content. You must also have skill in using format features and other options, optimizing the subject line, and knowing when to copy others. A professional signature will make your message shine, and knowing how to manage sending and receiving will keep both you and your recipients happy. Inbox monitoring, out-of-office messaging, and even your actual email address are other important areas for attention. In this “Email Hints and Caveats” series, we address these often-underemphasized considerations as it relates specifically to author/editor communications, although the information applies to any situation where you are “writing up” to an influential professional, whether it’s your boss or the president.
The following “irks” can make you look careless or sloppy, so read on and be careful.
Editor Irk: Sketchy Email Addresses
Your email address should be simple and professional. It is important to know the elements of an email address to employ it well. An email address consists of a username, the “@” sign (“at sign,” also known as the “commercial at”), and a domain name and associated extension. The domain name is set by the host or client account, such as Gmail, Outlook, AOL, or Yahoo.
Editors are generally not partial to a personal versus an institutional email domain, although there is a preference for an address that supports clarity and attenuates misconceptions. Institutional email usernames usually employ a succinct and standardized name-based format (a.rohan@fdu.edu), while personal email usernames or more creative and less succinct (annie-rohan7855@gmail.com). Shared e-mailbox addresses are crude (admissions@fdu.edu) even if you are the only recipient, as this may not be perceived as secure by the recipient. If you use a personal email address, make sure that it is name-based and bland. Hotgirl@hotmail.com does not send a positive message. SuperMidwife@gmail.com is not much better.
Unless you purchase your own domain (writers-camp.org), domain names cannot be edited, so check your domain and extension for accuracy. Some institutions have both a .edu extension and a .org extension, such as SimonSays.edu (the university) and SimonSays.org (the medical center or business incubator). Your recipient has no way of knowing the difference and cannot be expected to try an alternate extension if you incorrectly auto-populate or overlook this detail. Similarly, while an editor can guess that .emu should be .edu, they can certainly decline to fix this error, such as when you are registering on the journal website to submit a manuscript. It is surprising how many people misspell their own own name or email domain! Again, the recipient may be able to use Internet resources to correct the error, but this is not assured. In either case, inattention to detail reflects poorly on you.
Editor Irk: Random Interchange of Email Addresses
Many of us have more than one email address, but if you write from multiple addresses, you can easily confuse the person at the receiving end. Your recipient has no way of knowing that you are reliably checking your multiple addresses and as a result, may feel pressured to send the message to all your inboxes. Editors use manuscript management systems (i.e., databases) to keep track of manuscript authors and reviewers. A person with multiple email address may be listed twice in the database (and may be assigned to double the number of manuscripts). This is inefficient and can be time-consuming for the editor to sort through and correct. As an author, it is important to be represented by only one email address for your authorial activities. If you use multiple email addresses, make it look like you use only one to the person who is receiving your messages.
Editor Irk: Scanty Signatures
Include a professional email signature on every email. It should include your full name, job title, institution/company name, contact information (email, phone number, location), and a relevant professional website or social media link. Use an easy-to-read font (Georgia, Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial are favorites) and point size (11 or 12 recommended). Colors should be neutral or align with your professional affiliation and be readable on various devices. Always test your signature to assure that it renders correctly across different platforms. If you use your iOS or Android phone to send email, be sure to update the default “sent from my phone” closing to a professional, customized signature.
Include your email address in your signature. Yes…we know it is in the header, but it is easier for the recipient to copy from the signature line, whether they are replying to you or adding you to their contact list. The address in the header usually includes additional formatting characters such as angle brackets and parentheses. Many email clients treat the address as part of a larger object and not just as plain text, making it difficult to copy and paste. Make sure that if you are replying to someone, especially someone you do not know well and a reply back to you is important, that you include your signature block. Not all email programs include a signature on a reply by default. This is usually something you can adjust in the settings on your email.
Signature line images can appear disproportionate due to a mismatch between the image’s size or scale and how it is displayed by an email client. An image that appears appropriate on a desktop screen, when resized to fit on a phone screen, may appear huge. Knowing that this could be happening to your email images is the first step in preventing it from happening. Learn how to resize or reduce image file sizes—and then do it—to ensure that your email recipients have good reading experiences. Send yourself some emails and read them on different devices to check the size of images. Also, let trusted colleagues know to tell you if something is way off and should be corrected. This seems to be one of those quasi-personal things that people don’t like to mention, but they should.
Editor Irk: Jambalaya Credentials
The letters after your name: there are several correct—and many incorrect—ways to list them. Many journals have adopted standards for authors to list their credentials. While credentials aren’t required for an email contact to the editor, if you are going to include them (and in our experience, most nurses do), then consider these standards to use:
- Start with highest degree earned, listing only highest in each field. If there is more than one degree and you are interacting with a nursing journal, the nursing degree is listed first. ABD is not a degree. Nor is DNP(c). Do not use the prefix “Dr.” in combination with a credential that identifies a doctoral degree.
- Next, as applicable, are the legal credentials (i.e., professional licensure) that allows you to practice (RN, LPN).
- Next are state advanced practice designations (note that APRN is not interchangeable with ARNP, APP, CRNP, APN or NP, depending on your state).
- National certifications from recognized organizations are next, starting with those required for licensure (FNP-BC, RN-BC).
- Finally awards or honors (FAAN. FAANP) and other recognitions are listed.
Periods should be removed from acronyms to make credentials easier to read, and hyphens are used according to certifying bodies. If the gestalt is alphabet soup, consider abbreviating credentials where there isn’t a significant loss of value. Some journals limit how many letters/words/credentials an author can have after their name. If you run into this situation, it is probably not worth the effort to take it up with the editor or production group. This is a case of knowing when to “pick your battle.”
Conclusion
Email has been around for 30 to 40 years now, and for most professionals, it is the de facto method of communication. As editors, we have extensive experience with reading emails that encompass the good, the bad, and the ugly. With technologies such as spellcheck and artificial intelligence increasingly assisting in email composition, it is easier than ever to construct a professional email…but also more important than ever to take steps to prevent an “email malfunction.”
Be attentive to professional email standards and aware of potential email problems. Take the time to think carefully with every email message that you send, implement a professional address and signature, and know how to use your email client. These steps will help to ensure that your email represents you in the best possible light as an author.
Authors: Annie Rohan and Leslie H. Nicoll
Reviewed and Edited by: Jayne Jennings Dunlap
Copyright © 2025, Writer’s Camp, Annie Rohan and Leslie Nicoll. CC-BY-ND 4.0
Citation: Rohan A, Nicoll LH. Email Hints and Caveats: Advice for Authors Some Basics: Email Address and Signature Etiquette, The Writer’s Camp Journal, 2025; 1(2):14. doi:10.5281/zenodo.16955688
This is a great article! I have a question. You mentioned not wanting to confuse people by responding with different email addresses, which makes sense. For the past couple of years, when interacting with academic colleagues/editors etc, since I am in school, I have been using my school email address (a .edu) instead of my gmail (which is simply my name) to portray more “legitimacy” (if I’m making sense). However, I will be graduating next year and might get a job at another institution and will lose access to my school email address. This makes me feel like I should just start using my personal email address when corresponding with academia/editors because that will never change. I have this same concern with using a .edu email address as a corresponding author email address. I don’t want to appear “less professional” by listing my personal email, however, my school email will be defunct after next year. Thoughts?
That’s a great question, Melissa. Back in the “old days” it was actually hard to get an email address—you had to sign up with a group of some sort (AOL, Yahoo). If you worked at a university, you got an .edu address and that looked very professional (compared to Hotmail, eg). Now, anyone can sign up for an email and I think folks expect @gmail as the default.
Again, in the old days, most of us had only one email address (usually work) and used that for everything. Now, that is not best practice. I think that most people have (or should have) 3 emails: work (in your case, your university address where you are a learner); “professional/personal,” and “personal/personal,” which may be reserved for family, close friends, etc. In your case, I think using your professional/personal gmail address is fine and an editor won’t look askance at that. Mostly what we want is consistency and having some confidence that the email we send will get to the person and be read. It is disconcerting to send an email to a person’s university address in May and get an automated out-of-office reply that says they won’t be checking email until August when school is back in session!
I edit papers for students at a certain university. They all have .edu addresses and most of the students use that address consistently—but there is always someone who writes from their .edu address, then a work address, then (sometimes) a third one! I reply to whatever email is in my box and don’t bother trying to find/figure out what email I should be using. I have had students whose papers have gone astray because I sent them to the “wrong” address—but that’s not really my problem. That is something the student should be monitoring and staying on top of. My 2 cents. —Leslie