I became an avid user of email pretty early on, in 1993.  Back then most people had interesting ASCII signatures under their names.   I did not have ASCII art skillz, so I decided on something simple (let’s call it ‘minimalist’) for my signature.  Nearly every email message I signed as:

~Jana

And I still do that, with the exception of my professional correspondence, which generally ends in a:

Best,
Jana

or a

Sincerely,
Jana

or a

Thanks!,
Jana

I don’t remember why I chose a tilde as my defining signature character, but I suppose it was because it seemed to give my signature a bit more of a flourish than a dash.