Intranet: Policies and Procedures: Section 3: College Identity

3.03 Electronic Communications Policy

This guide addresses email signatures and securing of online materials. The options below are the official format to be used in email signatures. To maintain the accuracy, validity and integrity of information we choose to share with the public, the following formats must be adhered to.

• Securing documents
• E-mail Signature Standards
• E-mail Signature Examples
• E-mail Signature Templates

Securing documents

Internal drafts and co-authoring

For internal drafts and co-authoring, use Microsoft Word. This is the standard word-processing software supported by the University of Georgia and CAES OIT.

Public documents

For public documents, print or save Word docs as PDFs. PDFs preserve the lay out and information in the document and provide a common format that anyone can open with the free Adobe Acrobat software. PDFs can be created with Adobe Acrobat Professional or saved directly from Word and other Microsoft Office software by installing an add-in (see 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF).

Web documents

For web documents, consider your audience, the purpose of the document, and how the information may best be delivered. You may either create a new web page or upload a PDF to your website. Web pages are typically faster to load, do not require additional steps to open, and are inherently more accessible than PDFs. Do not upload Word docs -- these can be easily edited and require software that is not freely available outside of the university community.

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E-mail Signature Standards

Signature display and contents

• Include name, title, office, address, phone, fax, email, and website in your e-mail signature.
• Use dashes at the top of the e-mail signature to separate the signature text from the e-mail’s body text.
• Do not use quotes in your signature.
• Do not use e-mail wallpaper.

Font face, size and formats

• Use 8 point Arial/Helvetica font.
• Bold your name
• Bold and italicize your title
• Bold UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (or UGA Cooperative Extension)

Phone and fax numbers

• Separate the phone number’s area code, prefix and suffix with hyphens:
  
  • 123-456-7890
• Do not use parentheses around the area code: (123)
• Phone numbers are first, followed by its use:
  
  • 123-456-7890 Direct
  • 123-456-7890 Fax

Address information

• Use U.S. Postal Service approved abbreviations in your address:
  Street: ST, Avenue: AVE, Boulevard: BLVD, North: N, West: West, Southeast: SE, etc.

Punctuation

• The only punctuation necessary is the comma between city and state and between a name and its suffix:
  
  • Athens, GA 30602 USA
  • John Public, PhD
• Do not add periods to name suffixes:
  
  • John Public, Jr.
  • John Public, Ph.D.

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E-mail Signature Examples

Copy and paste the following information into your email program to create your own signature.

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E-mail Signature Templates

Copy and paste the following information into your email program to create your own signature.

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