The parts of an email signature, labelled with an annotated example

The parts of an email signature are twelve: name, title, company, phone, email address, website, booking link, address, logo, photo, social icons and a legal line. Three of them are required for the signature to do its job, four are recommended, and five are optional. This page grades each one, draws the text parts on a single example, then covers the parts you cannot see.

“Required” here is our word for “without it the signature fails to tell the reader who you are or how to reach you”. It is not a legal term, and no law is implied. The product facts come from Google’s Gmail help page and Microsoft’s page on message formats, both read in October 2026.

The drawn example, line by line

Here is one signature with every text part switched on. It is built by the emailfooter engine, using made-up details. Read it from the top.

Classic layout with every text part switched on. The company and person are made up.

From the top, the drawing shows the name in bold, then the title and department on one line, then the company. Under a thin rule come the two numbers, the email address, the website, the address and the booking link, each with a small icon. Below those sit the social icons, and the last, smallest line is the legal line.

The 12 parts of an email signature, graded

#	Part	Grade	What it does	Watch for
1	Name	Required	Says who wrote it.	Use the name clients know you by.
2	Job title (and department)	Required	Says why you are writing.	One title, in words clients use.
3	Company	Required if you have one	Names the organisation.	Use the trading name, not an internal team name.
4	Phone	Recommended	Gives a way to reach you without another email.	One number per purpose, with country code.
5	Email address	Recommended	Survives printing and copying.	The reply button has it already, so this is cheap to keep.
6	Website	Recommended	One next step.	A single link to the page you most want read.
7	Logo	Recommended	Makes the sender recognisable.	May not load, so it cannot carry facts.
8	Booking link	Optional	Saves a round of scheduling emails.	Suits roles that take calls.
9	Postal address	Optional	Useful if people visit or send post.	Costs a line.
10	Photo	Optional	Puts a face to a name.	Personal, and also may not load.
11	Social icons	Optional	Points to a profile you really use.	Keep to one or two.
12	Legal line	Optional, or required by your rules	Carries wording your sector needs.	Short, small, identical for everyone.

Rows 1 to 3 are required, rows 4 to 7 recommended, rows 8 to 12 optional. Where the grade changes for your situation, our checklist of what to include rates each part for a solo worker, an employee and a regulated firm.

The hidden parts of an email signature

Most of what makes a signature work is not on the screen.

Alt text on images

Alt text is the short description attached to each image. When a picture does not load, the reader sees the alt text, or a blank box if there is none. That matters more than it sounds: Microsoft’s page on picture downloads says classic Outlook blocks automatic picture downloads by default, with an InfoBar at the top of the message where the reader can choose Download Pictures. Give the logo the company name as alt text.

Link targets

Every phone number, email address and website in the example is a link. The visible text and the target are two separate things, and the target is where typos hide. A phone link follows the tel: format, which RFC 3966 says identifies globally unique numbers by a leading plus sign, and a website link needs the full address. Open every link once after you build the signature.

A plain-text version

Not every message is HTML. Microsoft’s page says the plain text format does not support showing pictures inside the message, and that a Rich Text message sent outside your organization is converted to HTML by Outlook. In plain text your signature is just lines of characters, so each part of an email signature that carries a fact must stand on its own as text. In the emailfooter engine, the “copy” step produces both an HTML version and a plain-text fallback.

What is not one of the parts of an email signature

Two things sit near the signature and are often confused with it.

• The sign-off. “Best regards” or “Thanks” is the closing words of the message. It comes before the signature and is yours to vary each time. See our sign-off examples for wording.
• The quoted thread. The older messages below yours are the mail app’s doing. A shorter signature on replies keeps that thread readable.

How the parts add up in length

Each extra part costs a line and some characters. Google’s page says a Gmail signature can hold up to 10,000 characters and that an image counts toward that limit, so a signature with a logo, a photo and three social icons uses more of it than a text-only one. In the example above, the text parts alone fill about eight rows. If that is too much for your use, drop the optional parts first, starting with the social icons and the address.

A reasonable minimum, for most employees, is rows 1 to 4 and a website: five lines. The best practices article explains why a shorter signature on replies is worth setting up.

Putting the parts of an email signature to work in a team

Knowing the parts of an email signature is the easy half. The hard half is keeping twenty people on the same twelve parts. In emailfooter the company admin sets the shared parts (company, logo, website, address, legal line, colours), and each employee fills in the personal ones (name, title, department, phone, photo, booking link). Employees still install the result in their mail app by following the steps shown, because emailfooter does not push signatures into mailboxes. The job title guide goes further on the second row, which is the part that goes wrong most often.

A final check for the parts of an email signature: read it with the images switched off. If the reader can still tell who you are and how to reach you, the required parts are doing their work.

Frequently asked questions

What are the parts of an email signature?

A name, a job title, a company, a phone number, an email address, a website, a logo and a few optional extras such as a booking link, a photo, social icons, an address and a legal line.

Which parts of an email signature are required?

By our grading, the name, the job title and the company. No law fixes that list. Your regulator or employer may add lines of its own, so ask them before you remove one.

What is the anatomy of an email signature?

The visible part is a short block of text lines with optional images. Behind it sit alt text on the images, links with their own targets and a plain-text version for apps that do not show HTML.

How many parts of an email signature should I use?

Most employees do well with five to seven lines. Start with the required parts and add one optional part only if a reader would use it.

Is the sign-off one of the parts of an email signature?

No. The sign-off, such as “Kind regards”, belongs to the message body. The signature starts with your name beneath it.