Robert Cummings <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Friday, November 07, 2003 11:35 AM said:
> And while I didn't have to scroll to read this email, I > often have to scroll for longer emails when it is bottom posted. > Which seems kinda silly to me since I've already read the thread. The only reason for that is because the person doing the replying did not trim the previous email enough. MOST of the time when I see bottom posting the person has left the entire email intact including the persons sig. In those cases I'd rather have the post at the top because it makes the bottom posting practically worthless. > A. dog >> Q. What is your favourite animal? >>> A. blue >>>> Q. What is your favourite colour? > > Looks pretty darned obvious to me. Amazing how some people use out of > context examples to bolster their arguments. It's like watching the > news these days. It's not "pretty darned obvious" everyone because the way a normal person off the street would read that is probably like this (in both of my examples you have to assume that the person doing the reading knows what >, >>, >>>, and >>>> means): 1. There eyes will read "A. dog" 2. Then they will realize that that sentence is in reply to something else. 3. Then they will read the next line "Q. What is your favourite animal?". 4. Then they will realize that that sentence is in reply to something else. 5. Then they will read "A. blue" 6. Then they will realize that that sentence is in reply to something else. 7. Then they will read "Q. What is your favourite colour?" If it was done the correct way: >>>> Q. What is your favourite colour? >>> A. blue >> Q. What is your favourite animal? > A. dog a person would read it like the following: 1. Read the first line "Q. What is your favourite colour?" 2. Read the next line knowing it's in reply to the first (no realization is involved because it's immediately obvious). 3. Read the next line knowing it's in reply to the first (no realization is involved because it's immediately obvious). 4. Read the next line knowing it's in reply to the first (no realization is involved because it's immediately obvious). So it's still the same thing even though your example is a little more accurate for the context of mailing lists. The point still stands that our brains are not trained to read that way. Any publication in English is not written like that, where the new information comes before the old information. Old information always comes first. Sure you can retrain your brain to read the wrong way, but why go to the trouble? Chris. -- Don't like reformatting your Outlook replies? Now there's relief! http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
