Is it because I'm getting old and reactionary that I find the use of pronoun lists in signing off emails strange? I mean firstly, when I get these emails at work, it's often in a context where I will be communicating with that person directly - so will use the second person 'you' and don't have much occasion to refer to colleagues in the 3rd person so don't need to be told if they are he/she/it/them etc Secondly, I ask myself would I actually be offended if I was referred to with the wrong gender pronoun in an email?( obviously if this was consistently the case with close colleagues then that's a different situation, which could be intentionally offensive/discriminatory) Thirdly, how far do we need to assert our identity in everyday professional communication? I mean, would it also be appropriate to clarify ethnicity and sexual orientation at the end of every email signature? (Regards Tom Smith, pronouns :he, him, ancestry: white Irish 50%, Romany 50%, orientation: bi-curious ?) And finally, it just feels stylistically clunky to me, like ending what could be a succinct and well composed message with an unnecessary appendix from a linguistics degree thesis - I mean it would feel more natural for me for this kind of info to be in another place and not ending the main body of the message(popping up from address bar for example?)
p.s. you can use any pronouns you like to refer to this OP!
p.s. you can use any pronouns you like to refer to this OP!
