Handwritten Signature in Email

A handwritten signature in an email signature is usually a scanned or drawn image of the sender's real signature, placed above the typed name. People add it for a personal, letter-like look, particularly in real estate, coaching, and executive correspondence. Three cautions apply. First, the image is not what makes an email legally signed. Whether an email counts as signed depends on the applicable law and the sender's intent, under frameworks such as the US ESIGN Act and the EU eIDAS Regulation, and some courts, including the English High Court in Neocleous v Rees (2019), have treated even an automatic signature block as a signature. Second, it is a security risk: anyone who receives your email can save the image and paste it onto a document, so people who sign contracts or approve payments often avoid it. Third, it is an image, so it may be hidden when images are blocked, it needs alt text for screen readers, and it should be a small PNG with a transparent background so it still works in dark mode. A common alternative is a script-style signature font for the name, which gives a similar look without exposing a copy of your real signature.