------- Original Message ------- On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 03:50, Peter N. M. Hansteen <pe...@bsdly.net> wrote:
> For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail > client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even > though > those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new > text on top. Don't forget AOL. In the old UseNet days, AOLers seemed to be the ones who most insisted on top posting and it drove the rest of us crazy. I'm not positive, but I think that the AOL software handled the mail and Microsoft came around to it somewhat later. I have come around to the point that I don't mind top posting if the remarks pretty much stand on their own and only address a single point. It even saves scrolling down to the bottom to read the comments, especially if the person being responded to didn't snip those parts that don't really relate to the comments being made. But you are right that inline is the way to go for anything suitably complicated in order to eliminate any chance of someone else getting confused about what is being referred to by the comment. In one web forum that I participate in, there are a few users who will quote the message being replied to and then insert their comments intermixed within the quoted part instead of separating the quotes out in pieces to avoid the reader from being seriously confused over who said what. I really hate it when they do that. So in response, I sometimes write my replies using the character code sequences such as J for J. That way, it forces those who can't be bothered to separate their comments from the quoted text to keep their text separate. I think that the main point is that the purpose of writing is so that others may understand what you had to say. The more difficult that someone makes it to decipher what they wrote, the more people won't even bother with them. Eric
