Email formatting / replies / quoting / limits (was Re: lookup problem)

[Kenneth Brody]

On 8/6/2010 3:33 PM, Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 05, 2010, John Esak wrote:
>> This message is even more scattered than the first one... Does anyone know
>> what is adding the "extra lines" everywhere?
>
> Mea Culpa:
>
> I probably shouldn't have approved the overlong message when it
> came up for moderation.  It didn't make much sense to me, but I
> will plead fatigure as I had just arrived at home after playing
> duplicate bridge with my wife (her first time at duplicate).
>
> In the future, I will *NOT* approve anything over 40K which is
> about 20 pages of text at 2K/page.

Well, despite it's vertical stretching, the e-mail (after HTML strippage) 
was "only" 21K.  (The HTML part was 63K on its own, however.)

Typically, the problem with text-only e-mails being too long is improper (or 
entire lack of) snipping of the quoted message.  Very rarely is it necessary 
to include the entire original message, unless it's a relatively short 
message to begin with.

And (sorry, John) my experience is that top posters are typically the worst 
offenders when it comes to lack of snipping unnecessary parts.

When properly trimmed, and properly quoted, I find inline replies to be 
easiest to read.  Not being in John's position, scrolling past quoted text 
to the new text is simple.  And, if I need to refer to previous messages, I 
simply look the quoted text immediately above the new text.  (And, even if 
it's not trimmed, as long as it's properly quoted, I still find inline 
replies best.)

-- 
Kenneth Brody