making email easier to read

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

The last couple of days' messages contains a few things that could be
improved.  I'm not going to quote examples because I don't want to
pick on anybody.

Here are my suggestions.  I'm not the boss, so consider these as
recommendations.

Please trim your quotes: only quote the part of a message that you are
responding to.  This will make it easier for readers.  Do include
attribution if you wish to (some folks think attribution does not
belong; that is a matter about which reasonable people can disagree).

It is almost always better to include the quote before your response.
If you are quoting the whole of a long message, you might want to put the
quote after your response.  But generally you should not quote a whole
message that the list will already have seen.

If you have responses to several parts of a message, it is usually
better to quote and respond to each in turn.  That makes it clear what
each of your responses relates to.

Please reply to the correct message.  Replying to a quote within
another message is usually silly and confusing (assuming that the
quote also appeared on the list).  It may be reasonable if you are
also responding to things in the quoting message.

Please use plain text, not HTML.  Keep your lines under 80 characters.
Keeping them under 70 allows them to be quoted without growing past
80.

This is all about making your message easier for the reader to
understand.  And less annoying.

Thanks.
--
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