So, what’s the conventional wisdom on email etiquitte, and for message board postings as well (in the case where the original text is included in your post or email reply).
Personally, I’m of the opinion that your reply should be on TOP, it’s just not that hard to read the email in reverse folks, and sure beats having to scroll to the bottom of the page to see the most recent reply.
Not only that but I usually trim the older parts of the email or post out to only include the last couple of replies.
If I’m responding to one or several specific points in the e-mail, I quote the relevant lines and respond under them.
If I just want to include the full text of the e-mail, I reply above, so that the person can just read my response, then scroll down if they need to read the original.
But for most of my e-mails, I just start a new blank message.
But I’m not the Miss Manners of the internet or anything.
I agree with Pod. But for message boards, I find it extremely confusing when people put the quote below their post. It gets even more confusing if you’re responding to multiple things being said. Always put the quote above your response on message boards. (There’s a board out there that doesn’t, isn’t there? I seem to remember an SDMB poster who did that because of prior experience.)
Yeah, that goes double for newsgroups. The old guys get really testy if you top post.
I agree with Pod. I’ve got friends who always reply under their orignal post (I’ve top posted, then they bottom post under both my message and theirs) and it’s horribly confusing…
I think an email response should be above the original message. I get confused when all I see at the beginning of an email is my own message. It takes a minute to figure out that there actually IS a response.
I prefer to keep the message looking like a conversation, with quote and then response. It’s much easier to follow, especially if you do as I do and trim the quoted material to the base essentials.
The exception is a business-type e-mail in which it’s handy to leave the quote at the bottom as a sort of “paper trail,” as long as the reply is basically a stand-alone thought or a simple confirmation/acknowledgment of what was written previously.
Always reply below quoted text. Always trim quoted text so that only the necessary parts remain. Always. Unless your email client is one of those totally retarded ones that don’t allow this, there are no exceptions to this rule. Top-posting is the scourge of mankind and should be eradicated, preferably by lethal force. There is no excuse. I would like to describe top-posters, but unfortunately this isn’t the Pit.
[testy]Top posters are muppets. Their muppetry is only exceeded by the muppets who quote entire posts to bottom post a single line of their own.[/testy]
Of course, what’s most deserving of scorn are the email applications that automatically top post. :mad: Designed by idiots.