Allan Cazaly wrote: > I've been reading about top or bottome posting. It would seem that > on on the message board(s), bottom posting is the norm. Everywhere > else seems to top post. All my "business" and private e-mails are > always top posted. (An automatic option).
Business emails are normally top posted and are not snipped. This allows the full history of an email exchange to be reviewed as and when required. Business emails are also on corporate networks where the bandwidth and storage required by this is not an issue. Email lists such as this should be bottom posted and the message being replied to should be heavily snipped. Bottom posting makes the email exchange feel more like a conversation than an exchange of formal business letters. The entire history of an email exchange is generally not relevant with email lists and should be removed leaving just enough of the original to see what is being commented on. This shows consideration for those downloading over slower mobile devices. Don't remove everything though as then the comment loses its relevance. I have seen messages which are obviously replies to something, consisting of just LOL! How is anyone supposed to know what the poster was laughing at? Some blackberry users seem to have problems with this. Since the blackberry is mainly aimed at corporate users I can see that it might well make it difficult to remove the email history. I have never used a blackberry, so don't know exactly how it behaves. Graham Keens commented earlier that he had been able to delete the irrelevant parts of a message before replying when using a blackberry, so it must be possible. > I have always top posted, even on the message boards, because it > never occurred to me to do otherwise. I personally find it tedious > to scroll down to see the latest message "update", as I have been > used to looking at the "answer" at the top. (Saves scrolling!) If an appropriate amount of snipping is done then you shouldn't need to scroll down to see the response. Unfortunately, some people don't seem to know what the cursor and backspace keys are for. Worst of all are those on digest who fail to remove the irrelevant parts of a digest and insert a one line pithy comment somewhere in the middle. Do they really think anyone can be bothered to search out their contribution? Needles and haystacks come to mind. Terry Streeter NB Arun - West Hyde (but not for much longer (I hope) :-) )
