When a poster has no text in the body of his post, the board automatically adds a bracketed NT after the post title: "[NT]"
When you put your initials in the body of your post, there is no "[NT]" which indicates to the reader that you have text, and people will click on your post to see the body of your post, only to find your initials. I know the asterisk is there for you to indicate that only your initials are in the body of the post, but you don't have to do that. The bracket-NT takes care of that for you.