Slogans, taglines, backgrounds prohibited in official email Published Dec. 8, 2010 By 81st Training Wing Legal Office and 81st Communications Squadron KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- Air Force guidance is clear - slogans, taglines and personalization shouldn't be used in official e-mail. Many contain quotes from famous people or are maxims from motivational books and posters. Although they may be inspiring, their use inAir Force e-mail is contrary to regulation. Air Force Instruction 33-119, Air Force Messaging, paragraph 3.7, specifically prohibits the use of slogans or taglines in Air Force e-mail. The ban reflects the fact that e-mail has replaced or supplemented formal Air Force communications like official memorandums, messages and taskings. As noted in the Tongue and Quill (pages 146 and 147), there are many ways to make social blunders and offend people when using e-mail. Slogans and taglines used in an official e-mail have the potential to be misinterpreted and, as a result, create an unfavorable impression of the sender and the Air Force. Beyond slogans and taglines, the AFI also states that users won't add special backgrounds, stationeries, digital images or unusual fonts in the body of their e-mails. While such personalized messages, with their extraneous content, may also lead to misinterpretation, they are guaranteed to use more bandwidth and increase the size of the message. Unnecessarily large e-mails negatively impact network performance for all base users.