Although this clearly does a disservice to the flair exhibited by the author, a more complex classification system that did capture such aspects of a style led to poorer statistical analyses. Another variation not easily described by our system is the style of simply not using a Personal Identifier at all. This question is an area of future research. A null signature can either be considered a valid signature consisting of no characters, or can alternately be considered a non-signature and inappropriate for inclusion in these statistics. Therefore, frequencies will be reported using both interpretations.
Authors seem to remain remarkably consistent with their choice of the use of pre-name characters.
This is an area of future research. It is also concluded that the time spent to conduct the research could have been better spent by the author taking a walk on a beautiful day. This is an area of future research. There are a number of interesting research questions whose answers might serve to further illuminate the culture of email, but were beyond the scope of our initial research. For example, it would be interesting to note the variability of signature use for a single author.