How to reply
Nowadays a lot of people reply in a way to email or postings on Usenet which I consider wrong: they
put their reply above the quoted original writing (also called top posting). However, there is a very easy recipe to reply
in what I (and many others) consider the right way:
A recipe for replying to mail and Usenet posts
- Quote the entire message you're replying to
- Delete blank lines inserted at the very top of the reply (if any)
- If your signature is inserted on top, delete it
- Move the cursor to the line after the name of the author you're replying to
- Read each quoted line from top to bottom
- If the line is not important for the reply, delete it
- If you delete several lines in a row, you might want to use a marker like: [..], ..., [cut], [snip]
- If you delete several lines but a hint for the context is required, put a short sentence between []
- If you reach a point that a reply is needed insert a blank line
- Start your reply on the line after the blank line
- When finished, go to 5. if there are quoted lines following
- If the program doesn't delete the signature of the person you're replying to, delete it yourself
- Reread carefully the message and try to delete more quoted lines
The whole idea of this recipe is that when you print your reply, and reread it after 3 months you
should be able to read the reply top to bottom without much effort, being able to understand it,
and know whom you're replying to.
If you reply to a message that has already quoted lines in it, make sure that the author of
those lines is also mentioned in your reply unless you deleted all the lines he/she has written
in your reply.
Top post myths
There are two top post myths which I attempt to debunk below:
People don't have to scroll to read the reply
Top posting saves time
Also today
