Signature block (English Wikipedia)

"Usenet Signature Convention". The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters. IETF. February 2004. sec. 4.3. doi:10.17487/RFC3676. RFC 3676. There is a long-standing convention in Usenet news which also commonly appears in Internet mail of using "-- " as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message.

economist.com (Global: 331^st place; English: 272^nd place)

RFC 1849: “Son of 1036”: News Article Format and Transmission, section 4.3 (1994, minor revisions 2010), said that "If a poster or posting agent does append a signature to an article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by one blank (ASCII 32)." However, RFC 1849 was superseded by RFC 5536 (2009), which says nothing at all about signature blocks or delimiters.
"Usenet Best Practice", Usenet Format Working Group, section 3.1.2.1 (2005) said that "Whenever a poster or posting agent appends such a signature to an article, it MUST be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (US-ASCII 45) followed by one SP (US-ASCII 32)." However, this document was an "Internet-Draft" and was never adopted as a standard.

"Usenet Signature Convention". The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters. IETF. February 2004. sec. 4.3. doi:10.17487/RFC3676. RFC 3676. There is a long-standing convention in Usenet news which also commonly appears in Internet mail of using "-- " as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message.
RFC 1849: “Son of 1036”: News Article Format and Transmission, section 4.3 (1994, minor revisions 2010), said that "If a poster or posting agent does append a signature to an article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a delimiter line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by one blank (ASCII 32)." However, RFC 1849 was superseded by RFC 5536 (2009), which says nothing at all about signature blocks or delimiters.

Nilesh Mehta v J Pereira Fernandes SA: ChD 7 Apr 2006, quoted in Swarbrick, D., Mehta v J Pereira Fernandes SA: ChD 7 Apr 2006, updated 19 January 2022, accessed 21 January 2023