Slashdot Mirror
Quoting in Emails?
Shanes asks: "I want to know how slashdot readers feel about the
IMO ever worse quoting habits of people writing mails. When I started
writing emails to friends and colleagues over 10 years ago I and
everyone else quickly learned how
to quote. These days most of the bytes in my inbox are "Original Message" quotes that
Outlook people always include at the end of every mail. Doesn't anyone care about sending well
edited mails anymore?" I have a simple rule, if I can't read it
without editing it first, it's probably not worth my time. Do any
of you get frustrated by the formatting of email in your inbox?
The worst has to be when you send a long email to somebody, and it makes it way back to you with the original message and "YES!!!!!!!!" at the top, but let's not talk about top-posting in email.
Sure, if your emails are only one sentence long this method works great but if your replying to mutliple questions/points/etc, quoting parts and replying to each works much better.
Judging by the use of quotes here, most slashdot readers agree with me.
2) I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion.
Sure, if your only interacting if one other person, but what if two people reply to you at the same time?
[Why Default Outlook Reply is Good]
> I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion.
I would have to disagree with your point #2. Our whole office uses the Outlook and the majority of them use the default reply method ( 99.9 % ). The biggest complaint I have is when I am forwarded or copied on an email discussion after several emails have been sent. I am forced to scroll through 5 to 10 pages of pure crap and headers trying to figure what the heck the whole thing is about.
For lengthy emails I generally use many of the practices outlined in the article, but I do have to confess for short communications between only one person I use the default the method. I can also say that I have been complimented on a reply that I took the time edit and breakdown in a very concise manner. So people do pay attention to this point.
"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty..."
And it's even better when they put the "YES!!!!" right at the bottom, so you have to scroll past your own message to see a single word of theirs!
And it's even better when they put the "YES!!!!" right at the bottom, so you have to scroll past your own message to see a single word of theirs!
Yep, it is, assuming they are in possession of half an ounce of intelligence, in which case they will quote only the specific question you asked (to which they are replying with "YES!!!!").
Chances are the question you asked is short enough (when properly quoted) that both it and the response will be visible immediately, without the need for any scrolling.
Topher
2) I can archive a single mail and have saved the whole discussion. Do I work with you? If so, let me know. I would have lots of fun editing the older portions of quoted text (I'm sure you don't read the full history of every message), rendering your single-message archive humorously useless! (or, if you get on my bad side, I could subtly alter the history of our conversation so that blame for project failure falls squarely on your shoulders...) Single message archiving only works if you can trust the person you're conversing with. That's fairly rare in a business environment.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
The people who make the big e-mail software (Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook) have no concept of good e-mail editing techniques. I haven't used Outlook much (avoid Micro$oft like the plague!), but I have to use Notes at work. Notes makes it very difficult (well-nigh impossible) to properly format a reply. So I join the bandwidth-wasting crowd and do what's easiest at work.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Actually, I think that the default quoting of entire messages is a benefit. First the idea of "wasted storage" doesn't bug me. Storage is cheap these days.
What I find value in is being able to go back in the thread and see the line of discussion, and why someone is asking me a question, and from what angle they're looking at it. In other words, it gives me the background and frame of reference that makes it easier to respond. And I only have to go back as far as I need (agreed that the most relevant information is towards the top, but sometimes it can be at the very bottom -- like a Director asking a question).
Email, by far, is a 'lazy' medium. (Heck, they even have spell checkers built in.) However, there are worse ways to communicate. In the office, instant messenging has dropped to the lowest common denominator of communication. I've dropped down to using one letter replies like 'y' (yes), 'n' (no), 'k' (okay).
...was to get answers to obscure questions.
What on earth is a little bitchfest doing here? There isn't even anything to respond to in the question (besides "yes, I do quote properly" or "no, I don't quote properly.")
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Uhm, I hit the lameness filter on a simple HTML formatted message for the sake of an example list? WTF is the point of allowing HTML if you filter like that? Especially when it allows this mess of 's, pipes and hyphens. Sigh
Except it has no frame of reference; to find out what you're replying to you have to jump to the bottom and find the reply, read it, work out what specific part you're replying to and then read your response again.
Um, no you can't. Threads aren't usually like:
| Bla Wibble Wobble Wa\--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
They're:
| Bla Wibble Wobble Wa|--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|--| Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
|\--| Foo (was: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa)
|\-- Re: Foo
\-- Re: Bla Wibble Wobble Wa
How do ypu propose to archive all those with a single message, even assuming you can trust every user to use the same reply method and not ever even concider changing anything?
The standard method of quoting; i.e, quoting as little as needed, replying in-context etc, results in shorter more structured messages that are easier to read and contain a minimum of redundant data. It also scales much better; when you're 20 replies deep in a thread, where your messages are hitting 200k with every previous message still in there, proper quoting is still just leaving the relevent information in there.
If you need to archive threads, you should save the entire thread out to an mbox, not pick one untrusted message and hope the thread is structured enough to all be contained in it.
Let's face it. Email etiquette is a niche.
One could make the same argument about any etiquette. And in some cases, like proper pinky placement while tea-sipping, the etiquette really is a niche, because the etiquette goes with something that is itself a niche. But that's not the case with email, which is rapidly becoming universal.
Any reasonable etiquette standard, from editing your email to not using your cellphone during a movie to not slurping your soup, is about consideration for others, about trading a little effort on your part for some benefit to those you deal with. To develop a taste for manners, all you need is the chance to regularly experience both sides of the behavior. A daily shower seems like an unnecessary nuisance until you sit next to somebody who bathes monthly.
Ever since the September that never ended, the Internet has been flooded with relative newbies. Newbies anywhere are notoriously short on manners. But the percentage of new people on the Internet has probably peaked already, so we should soon see some collective progress.
Certainly, I've seen signs of it. I've stopped receiving "send a card to tumorous Timmy" forward hoaxes; all my correspondents have passed that stage. And I've seen progress in the real world, too; during the last three movies I've attended, I haven't had to kill a single person for cellphone use.
And so it will go with quoting. A well-formatted message is more pleasant to read and easier to understand; those who want to communicate well will take the extra time. And those who don't catch on will look like dolts.
I know that many MTAs have an option to append a block piece of crap at the end of outgoing emails (or at least I think they do IIRC). Why not just use that functionality so that the information is only treated at the MTA level when it leaves your network?