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[[File:Board x2.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Hitchhicking sign made with 2 whiteboards for children.]]
Leaving Some people argue that leaving your sign lying around on the street gives hitchhiking a bad impression. Make sure to take your sign with you and only dispose it in a garbage can (ideally one for paper and cardboard).<br>On the other hand side, some hitchhikers make sure to leave their signs behind for following hitchhikers to use or at least to see that they're not alone in the world...
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* Use contrasting colors: black on brown cardboard is not very good readable for passing drivers, black on white is far more readable
* Use the same font as the route directions for clarity. Orderly signs suggest orderly people - but epic rides won't depend on that!
* Write only the initial letters letter in capitalscapital. The human brain detects a word not only by combining a few letters, but also by recognizing the different ascenders and descenders (the heights of the different words). When writing only in capital letters you lose this advantage. That's why street signs respect the upper and lower case.
* In general, signs are useful when going out of a city, from which many roads start or if, for example, you have a junction 15 km ahead and you do not want to walk, thus writing ''to the junction''.
* Often a big sign just saying ''please'' works wonders. People fall for the politeness if you can't get them to stop with a destination sign.
* Know your car number-plates, and you can get away with just writing a few letters - like HRO for Rostock, Germany. (see: Shortcuts)
* If you're bad in handwriting (like [[User:EliasExplores|EliasExplores]]), ask people if they can write signs for you. Workers at petrol stations are often surprisingly good artists.
==== Shortcuts ====
If you have a chance to plan a long hitchhiking trip in advance, some find using an erasable white board as a sign to be very useful for making big, clear and reusable signs. This sign can be used a lot of times without being cleaned with alcohol, and is resistant to wind and water.
Another possibility is to make a sign out of two small white boards that children use at school. Just join them with enough string so that you can fold those boards like you would close a book. The benefits compared to a single white board are that this sign takes a smaller place when folded (so it fits better in your bag), and that you can write your destination in advance without it rubs out in your bag.
====Reusable sign combined with map====
If you're hitch-hiking long routes (ex. Europe), you can make a reusable sign on bad side (white) of the map. Cover the map with self adhesive tape, and you will have: a waterproof map and reusable sign. For easier cleaning use whiteboard markers.
==== Waterproof, dust-proof document bags ====
==== Print your sign ====
If you have access to a computer with a printer, you can make a quality hitch sign easily then. Since most languages read horizontally, set the page orientation to be landscape but with a size twice long as a normal A4 sheet. For a place name no longer than 9 letters, you can set the font size from 200 to 500 points to fully utilise the page size in one line; longer place names can be wrapped into two lines. The process of [http://www.marvelousessays.com/essay-writing.html essay writing] will be much easier with MarvelousEssays.Com as there are a lot of highly professional and talented writers who are always eager to help you out with any sort of academic assignments regardless of the complexity levels. I do know what I�m talking about! Using a tiled printing software, you can print the long page to two sheets. Cut off the short tiling margin of one sheet and glue two sheets together, find a cardboard of same size and use four paper clips to pin the paper onto it, a lightweight wind-resistant hitch sign is ready to use. You don't need a waterproof sign, if you don't hitch in the rain or underwater. The plastic bag idea in previous tips will reduce contrast and introduce reflectivity. In case of that it rains, just wrap your hitch sign with the cling film from kitchen and it will work fine. [[Myoto]] has an [http://www.myoto.be/tool/index.html online tool to make a printable sign].
[[File:HitchSignPrintHitchhikingSignIrun.JPGpng|thumb|200px|A worked reusable hitch sign print clipped on a cardboard support, with a [[User:EliasExplores|EliasExplores]] proudly showing his sign print roll and a cling filmto get to Irun.]]
[[File:Smileycardboard.jpg|thumb|200px|Even this can work great]]
[[File:Signs.JPG|thumb|200px|Some more examples]]
==== Don't leave your sign lying around ====
== When not to use signs ==
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