Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/12/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]2001-12-03-21:17:08 Doug Ford: > wrong. Right back atcha. I respectfully disagree. This notion of sending each paragraph as an arbitrarily-long line, and only putting newlines (there's a reason they're called newlines, Bucky!) in where there are breaks between blocks of text, is a newfangled one, and not the authoritative convention for text-based email. It's another of those degenerate practices, like quoting entire previous messages at the end of your email instead of interleaving just the bits you're responding to set off with an appropriate quote prefix like '>', which seem to be gaining currency among those who haven't been properly socialized to email, especially Microsoft users. I think it has its genesis in word-processor practices, and has seeped into email. I've been disappointed to note that even our revered listadmin (how he became corrupted in this way I don't know) sends mail with these unwrapped lines, but I hadn't thought it necessary until now to offer a correction. I note with interest but no surprise that the people in this thread who advocate unwrapped text use Windows-based email clients. Yes, even Brian. Sigh. I can live with that, though; I can read unwrapped text acceptably if I have to. The most egregious of these sins, to me, is the quoting thing. When you quote the entire message you're responding to at the end of a message, maybe with a little line of dashes above it, you're not just wasting bandwidth and archive space; you're not just creating visual clutter; you're implicitly telling your recipients that you're just too busy (or something) to show them the respect of putting in the work of selecting the parts of the previous thread you're responding to, supplying concise attributions, and interleaving just the text you're responding to (set off as quoted) so as to make it easy for the reader to know just what's going on. It just seems lazy and disrespectful to me. [Here Endeth the Old Crank's Email Manners Diatribe.] - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html