It makes it easier to know what part of the original message a response is in reply to.
As a general rule you should reply in-line, quoting only the specific parts of a message your response is in reference to. Matthew Eric Johnson writes: > ------- Original Message ------- > On Tuesday, March 7th, 2023 at 03:50, Peter N. M. Hansteen <pe...@bsdly.net> > wrote: > > > For whatever reason, Microsoft's Outlook or possibly earlier Microsoft mail > > client products dragged in a convention of quoting the whole thread (even > > though > > those early clients did not in fact have the thread concept) and putting new > > text on top. > > Don't forget AOL. In the old UseNet days, AOLers seemed to > be the ones who most insisted on top posting and it drove the > rest of us crazy. > > I'm not positive, but I think that the AOL software handled > the mail and Microsoft came around to it somewhat later. > > I have come around to the point that I don't mind top posting > if the remarks pretty much stand on their own and only address > a single point. It even saves scrolling down to the bottom to > read the comments, especially if the person being responded to > didn't snip those parts that don't really relate to the comments > being made. > > But you are right that inline is the way to go for anything > suitably complicated in order to eliminate any chance of > someone else getting confused about what is being referred > to by the comment. > > In one web forum that I participate in, there are a few users > who will quote the message being replied to and then insert > their comments intermixed within the quoted part instead of > separating the quotes out in pieces to avoid the reader from > being seriously confused over who said what. I really hate > it when they do that. > > So in response, I sometimes write my replies using the > character code sequences such as J for J. That way, it > forces those who can't be bothered to separate their comments > from the quoted text to keep their text separate. > > I think that the main point is that the purpose of writing > is so that others may understand what you had to say. The > more difficult that someone makes it to decipher what they > wrote, the more people won't even bother with them. > > Eric Why?
