_The Ending_ { The Signature. consists of { The Rank. { The Regiment, Corps, or Department. “Official communications will be signed or authenticated with the pen and not by facsimiles, and if written by order, it will be stated by whose order. Signatures will be plainly and legibly written. By virtue of the commission and assignment to duty, the adjutant of any command transacts the business or correspondence of that command over his signature; but when orders or instructions of any kind are given, the authority by which he gives the order must be stated.”[20] “The _Body_ of the letter will be followed by the _Signature_. If the _Rank_ and the _Regiment_, _Corps_ or _Department_ of the writer appear at the beginning of the letter, they will not appear after his name; but if they do not appear at the beginning of the letter, they will follow under his name.”[21] To illustrate fully what we have said, let us write the _Body_ and _Ending_ of the first illustration of the _Brief_: The Department Commander directs that you submit without delay the report of your recent inspection of the Organized Militia of the State of New York, and that you also submit an explanation of your failure to comply with par. 6, S. O. 25, c. s., these headquarters. J. L. Thurst, Lieut. Col., 24th Cav. One-half inch below the Ending of the letter comes the first of the _Indorsements_, and the succeeding _Indorsements_ follow one another serially, with a space of about one-half inch between _Indorsements_. Letters in the military service are not answered in the sense in which we use the term in civilian life. In other words, the person who receives a letter does not retain it and reply thereto by another. Instead he states what he has to say in an _Indorsement_, which is put down in continuation of the original letter. Thus everything which has been written in regard to the contents of a letter appears as a part of the letter when it is finally filed. When Captain Douglas’ request for leave of absence, for example, reaches the headquarters of his regiment, it has added to it the Colonel’s indorsement which appears as follows, provided the Colonel wishes the Captain to obtain the leave: 1st Ind. Hq. 99th Inf., Madison Barracks, N. Y., Jan. 11, 1940— To the Comdg. Gen., Dept. of the East. Approved recommended. E. F. Hush, Colonel, 99th Inf., Comdg. The serial number of indorsements, the place, the date, and to whom written, will be written as shown above. When typewritten, they will be written single-spaced, with a double space between paragraphs.