Editing Encyclopedia:Signatures (section)

=== <span id="LENGTH"></span> Length ===
{{Shortcut|WP:SIGLEN|WP:SIGLENGTH}}
{{strong|Keep signatures short, both in display and in markup.}}

The limit is '''255 characters'''.

Extremely long signatures with a lot of HTML/wiki markup make page editing and discussion more difficult for the following reasons:
* Signatures that take up more than two or three lines in the edit window clutter the page and make it harder to distinguish posts from signatures.
* Long signatures give undue prominence to a given user's contribution.
* Signatures that occupy more space than necessary in the edit box displace meaningful comments, thus forcing editors to scroll when writing their replies.
* The presence of such long signatures in the discussion also disrupts the reading of comments when editors are formulating their replies.

The software will automatically truncate both plain and raw signatures to 255 characters of {{em|code}} in the Signature field. If [[#NT|substitution]] of templates or another page is used, please be careful to verify that your signature does not violate the 255-character length limit when the templates are expanded, as the software will not do this automatically.