I post at the top of the mail because that's how Gmail does it, and it
keeps conversation flow well enough, and compacts large blo0cks of
quoted text. Arbitrary style rules are not cool, man.
On 7/28/06, Ben Byer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Jul 28, 2006, at 12:59 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> It's pretty standard for new text to go on the top of messages in
> emails and
> on email lists, and on the bottom of messages in forum posts. I've
> taken a
> look at the archives and most people are posting new text on top.
> Perhaps
> you'd be more comfortable if a forum were setup?
Taken from http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html (which is
talking about Usenet, but the issues are identical):
2.3 Why should I place my response below the quoted text?
Usually, the reading-flow is from left to right and from top to
bottom, and people expect a chronological sequence similar to this.
Especially people who are reading a lot of articles (and who
therefore would qualify as the ideal person to answer your question)
appreciate it if they can read at first the text to which you are
referring. The quoted text is some kind of help to remember the
topic, which of course will not work, if you place the quoted text
below your response.
Furthermore, that's the standard. This may sound as a weak argument,
but since people are not used to reading the other way around, they
have no idea what you are referring to and have to go back and forth
between the referenced articles, have to jump between different
articles and so on. In short - reading the article becomes more and
more difficult - for people who read many articles it is reason
enough to skip the entire article, if the context is not obvious.
And besides: doesn't it look stupid to first get the answer and then
see the question? (Aside from Jeopardy, of course.)
Furthermore, you (yes: You) save a lot of time using this way of
quoting: You do not need to repeat what the person you refer to
wrote, in order to show the context. You just place your comment
after the text you wish to comment upon, and everybody immediately
knows what you refer to. Also, you realize which text you are *not*
responding to and can delete these parts.
So: using this technique you save time, your readers don't have to
waste time, you save bandwidth and disk-space. Isn't it great what
you can achieve by such simple means?
2.4 But my newsreader places the cursor above the quoted text.
Yes, of course. The cursor is placed at the beginning so you can edit
the text from top to bottom and delete the parts you are not
referring to. And of course it is easier for you to place your
response where it belongs - the newsreader has no way of knowing this.
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--
--Jesse
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