Ambiguity through inappropriate message layout

[Mark Newton]

Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> So why do you put your reply in a logically wrong place?

Aesthetically wrong, not logically wrong.  And beauty is in the eye
of the beholder.

If the authors of the very first mail client which supported quoting had
made it top-post by default, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Or, perhaps we would, we'd just be berating those clueless fools who use
bottom-posting MUAs like Emacs.

There are strong arguments for both sides.  If someone has been following
a conversation closely enough to know its context, and their correspondent
is good enough at writing that their replies are largely self-contained,
then top-posting is probably better because you can get to the meat of
the reply without wading through terabytes of crap you've already read
and don't need to see again.


   - mark


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I tried an internal modem,                    newton at atdot.dotat.org
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