Re: [ietf-822] "--" first in lines to indicate start of signature

[Russ Allbery <[e-mail]>]

Hector Santos <[e-mail]> writes:

> I don't like the idea of trying to standardize a "-- " tag although this
> character sequence seems to be popular among "some" IETF users, but not
> outside.

Use of "-- " for a signature delimiter is ubiquitous on Usenet and has
been for decades, for whatever that's worth.  I suspect many of us who use
this convention in email are either old Usenet users or are using software
that understands both email and Usenet and treats them similarly (or both,
as in my case).

In email, it's also reasonably common as a delimiter for the footers added
by mailing list software.  I believe Google Groups uses it, for instance.

It's always been a wart, and it's certainly not the sort of thing that one
would design today in an intentional standard for a whole host of reasons,
but it has a *very* long established history.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([e-mail])              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>