Re: Making replies

["Willem-Jan Markerink" <w.j.markerink@xxxxx>]

On 17 Nov 98 at 11:31, B. Adamson wrote:

> > Of which the reply on top is the worst of the two....making it near
> > impossible for the next person to reply....
> 
> Hmm, is the reply on top a violation of netiquette?  

Yup, this rule has made it into many Netiquette listings....it makes 
it simply nearly impossible to continue treads in multiple 
replies, forcing people to copy & paste to get a meaningful 
message....on Usenet, you can even add more injury to insult by using 
a sig-separator (dash-dash-space ('-- ')), which in many 
newseditors then cuts off everything below....including the 
quote....8-((

> I generally do it that
> way for two reasons.  One, if I am following a thread, I have seen the quotes
> several times already and hate scrolling through them (oh, oh, my
> carpal-tunnel is acting up again!).  

How do you know whether it isn't a secondary reply, with a different 
quote (that quote being a reply on the first message)?....;-))

On Usenet you can see at the header-threading how 'deep' the reply
is, ie to what message it refers, but with mail there is no such 
distinction, every next reply has the same header as the one 
before....

> Two, is that window widths seem to vary a
> great deal, so that quotes get wrapped oddly and it can be difficult to
> separate the quote from the reply.

Yet one more Netiquette rule....set line length/break at 80 
characters max, preferably a few less....;-))
 
> However, both these annoyances can be minimized if quotes are properly edited,
> so I suppose I can break a bad habit, if necessary.  Sigh! Well, I guess to
> paraphrase, you can't make all of the people happy all of the time.

You don't have to, just restrict yourself to the intelligent 
crowd....;-))

 

--                 
Bye,

Willem-Jan Markerink


      The desire to understand 
is sometimes far less intelligent than
     the inability to understand


<w.j.markerink@xxxxx>
[note: 'a-one' & 'en-el'!]
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