So how do you respond to emails?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A recent thread in the pit got me thinking about this as the OP dogged a guy for not clipping his email responses.

Personally, I really prefer to have the original text which prompted the response in the email so I may refer to it if I wasn’t quite sure what the exact context was. I will definitely clip off anything more than that, but I wish more people did include the original letter in the response.

You know [sheepishly], I sometimes even do line-by-line responses like I was quoting people on the SDMB. :o But really, I do receive an awful lot of email, usually involved in some interesting conversations with many people, and so I kinda need those responses there to understand what exactly is going on as the informal nature of email lends itself to sloppy writing and assuming context.

What say you, dopers? You hate all the
>>
>>
>>
or not?

2

For personal emails, I like to quote the previous message with the >> as well. Helps me address anything that was mentioned in the previous email directly and ensures that I don’t forget anything that I mean to say. If you keep replying back and forth, though, that can get to be a pretty monstrous email that will take you upwards of an hour to write.

In business emails, though, I have the entire message quoted at the bottom and then I write my message at the top. Cleaner and more to-the-point.

Colin

3

Unless the email is very short and to the point, I generally leave the original message quoted with > at the bottom, and write my message at the top. Occasionally I do line-by-line replies but generally only when replying to a long email with a lot of minor things I wish to address.