Sh'mae FJ, On Sat, 10 Aug 2002, at 12:12:07 [GMT +0200] (11:12 where I live) you wrote:
FdB> Hello Adam, FdB> Saturday, August 10, 2002, 11:51:10 AM, you wrote: FdB> I find that point 6 of this reference is actually argueing my case. A snippet taken from http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote2.html .... 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? -- 10 August 2002, 11:20 [ Adam Rykala : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] [ [new-wales] project : www.new-wales.net ] [ Public key : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. All my emails are scanned with AntiVir's Antivirus Mail Gateway for Linux. ________________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
