On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 08:02:03AM -0700, Carl Zwanzig wrote: > On 4/3/2015 4:55 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > >On Thu, Apr 02, 2015 at 08:09:12PM -0700, David Benfell wrote: > >>The consensus on most technical lists I've seen is very strongly in > >>favor of bottom posting, > > >Perhaps you mean interleaved or inline posting, as I've done here? > > To the vast majority of people that use the terms at all, "bottom-posting" > and "in-line posting" are IME used interchangeably and for the same style.
I would love to see your survey results that show that. I haven't done any surveys, but in my anecdotal experience, I can tell you that the regulars on a number of Python mailing lists are aware of the difference. I can probably even find a post from a beginner who admitted to deliberately adding his reply to the very end of the quoted text, without trimming, because he had been mislead by the term "bottom-posting". That's what he'd been told to do: post at the bottom, right? He was actually quite relieved to be told he was allowed to interleave question and answer. Apparently there is, or at least was in 2011, a plugin for Apple's Mail.app which enabled bottom-posting. The quoted email is inserted in its entirety above the user's response. The Wikipedia article on posting styles distinguishes between the three: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style although of course interleaved/bottom posting are indistinguishable when there is only a single point being replied to. In any case, regardless of whether it is an overwhelming majority who (mis)use the term "bottom-posting" for interleaved replies, or a vanishingly small minority, I believe that as we are (I hope) technically-minded people who consider precision in language important, making that distinction is important and I shall continue to do so. -- Steve ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
