From: Stein A. Stromme (stromme@mi.uib.no)
Date: Tue Apr 22 2003 - 03:48:04 EDT
[Debbie Mann]
| BlankSomeone fill me in on the rules to replying on this system. Or the
| rules in general.
Despite common practice, it is much easier for everyone to follow a
discussion if the following guidelines are followed:
1. Only quote the material that is directly relevant to your own
reply or comment. Assume that interested readers have the
resources to look up the entire thread if necessary, either by
saving messages for a while or by looking up the archives.
2. Reply *below* the quoted material, or interspersed between parts
of it. Avoid top posting, i.e. putting the answer before the
question (this is not the TV show "jeopardy").
3. Let your mail editing software break lines at 70 characters or
so. This will make their formatting survive a couple of rounds of
quoting.
4. Use only straight text, no html, colors, boldface etc. For
emphasis use simple ascii tricks such as _underline_ or /italic/ or
*bold*. (If you see these as real underlines, italics etc, it is
due to the intelligence of your mail reader software.)
I recommend <http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanb/documents/quotingguide.html>
which also has help for Microsoft Outlook users, as well as pointers
to other relevant sources. It is written for usenet groups, but is
good advice also for the asa list, in my view.
Stein
A: Because it is hard to read.
Q: Why?
A: Top posting.
Q: What is really confusing on an email list?
-- Stein Arild Str¯mme +47 55584825, +47 95801887 Universitetet i Bergen Fax: +47 55589672 Matematisk institutt www.mi.uib.no/stromme Johs Brunsg 12, N-5008 BERGEN stromme@mi.uib.no
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