On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 13:57:09 -0600
"David C. Rankin" <drankinatty@...> wrote:

> On 02/25/2014 11:57 AM, Darrell wrote:
> >> The stupid double dash is the the defacto marker signifying the 
> >> beginning of a sig. Why would you want rid of it?
> > 
> > Because I am anal sonuvabitch.
> > 
> > De facto according to whom?
> > 
> 
> No clue, but it is the standard, just like with my signature below. When used,
> the signature is automatically removed on reply/forward and replace by your
> signature. I'm sure there is a RFP that details it somewhere, but I haven't
> googled it :)

RFC 3676, section 4.3, describes it, but the custom predates that document by 
many years.  Interestingly, RFC 1855 ("Netiquette Guildelines"), which I would 
have expected to be the governing document, makes no mention of sigdashes.
It's always been primarily a Usenet convention, though--I expect it spread to
email when it became common to combine the clients for both communication
methods in a single program.

E. Liddell