I love the country music line ‘if the phone don’t ring you’ll know it’s me.’ And I like this boilerplate language, which basically says the same thing:
This e-mail message and any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify XXX, Inc. immediately by replying to this message and destroy all copies of this message including all attachments. Also, please DISREGARD this mail if you received it WITHOUT this disclaimer since that would mean it was not legitimately sent from the XXX mail server. Thank you.
Thanks to Bryan Sims for sending this along. What’s your favorite boilerplate language? (leave a comment below)
P.S. If you want a better practice, check out this Ultimate Guide.
Ah! Boilerplate–especially Latin boilerplate–makes me swoon. Mmmmm!
If we have sent this to you in error, you are free to laugh at us and discard this document. A phone call would be nice, though.
Air Force manuals often contain pages marked only, “This page intentionally left blank.”
My favorite is a sign on a wall:
Disregard this sign.
You know, “please DISREGARD this mail …” is just not completely dumb. There’s a “sweet spot” in email density where it works. Here’s how:
(1) You get exactly ONE email from this source and it lacks the disclaimer. You’ll never know.
(2) In three days, you get ten emails from this source. The tenth one lacks the disclaimer and you immeiditely realize it was munged or spoofed.
(3) In three months, you get hundreds of emails from this source. Occasionally the disclaimer is missing, but you’ve tuned it out by now and you never notice.- Precision Bloggerhttps://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
I recently received an email with this boilerplate at the bottom:
The trouble with this boilerplate is it appears at the bottom of the email. So by the time you get to “please do not read,” it’s too late.
You asked: “What’s your favorite boilerplate language?”I prefer a language that looks pretty but I have no hope of understanding. I don’t have to figure out, or obey, what the boilerplate tells me to do!
Korean works for me.- Precision Bloggerhttps://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
“Further, Affiant Sayeth Naught”
I see this on affidavits, but I don’t know why the hell it is there. In other words, I have other methods of determining where and when the affidavit ends, such as when the words stop and the signature line appears. (What language is that anyway?)
Please disregard this comment if you have already read it.
In any case, please do not start to read this comment.
– The Precision Bloggerhttps://precision-blogging.blogspot.com
“any any additional relief the court deems just and proper”