Top-posting Considered Harmful

[prog]

I'm starting to fear that Jeopardy-style quoting is so prevalent now that many people just stop reading as soon as they see their own name in an email

Comments

[treacle_well]

Adding "see my responses below" added to the end of the preamble sometimes works.

[derspatchel]

As much as I am sitting right with you on the "Top-Quoting Breeds Unnecessary Confusion" bus, I am ever so perturbed and embarassed because you swore to me you would keep my deeply-rooted love of cheese a secret. :(

[prog]

OH CRAP I THOUGHT I HIT "FORWARD"

[jtroutman]

I think it is entirely Outlook/Exchanges fault.

We have Exchange at work, and I hate it for this reason. I have not yet investigated if there is sort of 3rd party plug-in for Outlook that alters this default behavior -- there is NO preference settings for it that I can find.

I spend extra time on all of my work email to NOT top-post the emails, and do in-line quotes. But I am the only person in the company who seems to do this.

[prog]

Pretty much every mail program that you don't have to be a Linux weenie to use does it, including Apple Mail and GMail. I have done the "hit 'reply', delete the first few blank lines, move cursor down" maneuver so often now that I have muscle memory for it.

[chocorisu]

There's advantages to quoting but since hardly anybody does it these days there's no way we're going to re-train everyone whose only experience with email is through Outlook-inspired top-posting clients. "Progress", eh?