Editing Signature block (section)

===Standard delimiter===
{{anchor|Signature dashes}}The Usenet news system standards say that a signature block is conventionally delimited from the body of the message by a single line consisting of exactly two hyphens, followed by a space, followed by the end of line (i.e., in [[C_string_handling|C]]-[[Escape_sequences_in_C#Table_of_escape_sequences|notation]]: <code>"--&nbsp;\n"</code>).<ref>{{Cite IETF |rfc=3676 |title=The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters |section=4.3 |sectionname=Usenet Signature Convention |date=February 2004 |quote=There is a long-standing convention in Usenet news which also commonly appears in Internet mail of using "-- " as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message.}}</ref><ref>[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1849#section-4.3.2] RFC 1849: “Son of 1036”: News Article Format and Transmission, section 4.3 (1994, minor revisions 2010), said that "If a poster or posting agent does append a signature to an article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by one blank (ASCII 32)." However, RFC 1849 was superseded by {{IETF RFC|5536|link=no}} (2009), which says nothing at all about signature blocks or delimiters.</ref><ref>[https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-usefor-useage-01#section-3.1.2.1] "Usenet Best Practice", Usenet Format Working Group, section 3.1.2.1 (2005) said that "Whenever a poster or posting agent appends such a signature to an article, it MUST be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (US-ASCII 45) followed by one SP (US-ASCII 32)." However, this document was an "Internet-Draft" and was never adopted as a standard.</ref> This latter prescription goes by many names, including “dash dash space”, "sig dashes", "signature cut line", "sig-marker", "sig separator" and "signature delimiter". It allows software to automatically mark or remove the sig block as the receiver desires.
{{quote
|<pre>-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.         in...@clari.net
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,160,000 paid sbscrbrs.)  <nowiki>http://www.clari.net/brad/</nowiki></pre>
|''a real example from [[Brad Templeton]] posting in rec.humor.funny in 1995'' showing sig dashes.<ref name=obf>Note that the email address has been automatically obfuscated by Google Groups</ref><ref>[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.humor.funny/1993$20brad/rec.humor.funny/zfVveummRa0/JpXw2exJmMcJ "Admin: "Internet Jokebook" price reduced to $9.95"], 02/12/1995, rec.humor.funny</ref>
}}

Most Usenet clients (including, for example, [[Mozilla Thunderbird]]) will recognize the signature block delimiter in a news article and will cut off the signature below it when inserting a quote of the original message into the composition window for a reply.  Although the Usenet standards strictly apply only to Usenet news articles, this same delimiter convention is widely used in email messages as well, and email clients (such as [[K-9 Mail|K-9]],  Opera Mail, and [[Gmail]]<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.patronum.io/why-do-i-have-two-dashes-above-my-email-signature| title = "Guide to enabling disabling email delimiter in Gmail by the company Patronum"| date = 28 May 2022}}</ref>  commonly use it for recognition and special handling of signatures in email.