[vox-tech] Sig line [ newbie annoyed with tin ]

[Karsten M. Self]

on Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:52:55AM -0800, Rod Roark (rod@sunsetsystems.com) wrote:
> Actually I don't much care for that behavior in mail readers.  Many
> times (like this) I reply at the top of the message (so people don't
> have to go scrolling for it), and if my sig immediately follows then
> all the rest will be chopped when someone else replies -- whether they
> want that or not.
>
> No big deal, but I'd much rather have to edit out a sig or two, and
> have the flexibility of composing a reply as I see fit.


"Email Quoting" from the Jargon File.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Email-Quotes.html

    Most netters view an inclusion as a promise that comment on it will
    immediately follow. The preferred, conversational style looks like
    this:

	 > relevant excerpt 1
	 response to excerpt

         > relevant excerpt 2
         response to excerpt

         > relevant excerpt 3
         response to excerpt

    or for short messages like this:

         > entire message

	 response to message

    Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
    occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like
    this:

         response to message

         > entire message

    but this practice is strongly deprecated.


Nick Moffitt puts this rather more succinctly:

    A: No.
    Q: Should I include quotations after my reply?

It's strongly recommended practice.  On lists with high volume, I target
my reading (and responses) to those posts which best follow traditional
quoting, wrap, trim, attribution, and followup (threading) protocols.
To say nothing of using something remotely resembling standard grammer,
sPelLInG, and word cased.  You're extending your audience by using
these.

I've explicitly *left* lists at which the majority of users (and/or
their tools) break such traditions, or killfiled people who can't seem
to grasp these basic concepts where the readership (authorship?) as a
whole does have a clue.  It's not worth my limited cycles to deal with
*your* lack of protocol.

Or as I put it:  write as if you're asking your reader a favor.  Very
often you are.

Peace.

--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Geek for hire:  http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html