Quoting¶
Due to current events (and I always loose this link), I’ll just quickly drop the quoting guidelines I am usually following here.
Why?¶
Emails are getting easier to read and are leave less room for interpretation about what is meant. At the end people will require less energy for understanding you.
What is “topposting” and what i wrong with it?¶
The main problem is that you put your answer before the question you are trying to answer. An example:
Subject: RE: practical testing
From: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
To: Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com>
No, that's not the case.
But yes, I think it's the case as well.
---
John Doe
Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com> wrote:
> This posting will put up a lot of questions.
>
>
> Is the earth a globe?
> Or is it actually flat and on the back of the big turtle?
>
> Furthermore are there some other, more practical questions I'd like
> to have an answer to.
> Are there any rules how emails should be quoted, or should I just
> follow my gutt-feeling?
>
> --
> Jane Doe
> My life tomorrow will be better, I hope.
As you can see it’s not quite obvious which answer John was actually referring to. He can still be assumed to be the guy believing that the earth is flat and that it does not matter at all how you send your emails.
When you are topposting, it is also unnecessary to attach the quoted text. Most Email clients can just by the press of a button fetch the original email, if you still need to read it.
Though most email clients put the cursor also at the topp of the email, it is not quite the best place to start writing either.
Cut the crap¶
Looking again at the previous example and assuming at John Doe learned to move his answer below the original test, the email would look more like this:
Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com> wrote:
> This posting will put up a lot of questions.
>
>
> Is the earth a globe?
> Or is it actually flat and on the back of the big turtle?
>
> Furthermore are there some other, more practical questions I'd like
> to have an answer to.
> Are there any rules how emails should be quoted, or should I just
> follow my gutt-feeling?
>
> ---
> Jane Doe
> My life tomorrow will be better, I hope.
Subject: RE: practical testing
From: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
To: Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com>
No, that's not the case.
But yes, I think it's the case as well.
---
John Doe
As you can see it still not quite easy to understand what John is referring to. Mainly because there are just too many questions in Jane’s initial message. Unless you are a telepath, you cannot figure this out for sure. He still believes that the earth is flat and you could do what you want.
If John would have answered as in the example below, all uncertainty is removed and you can be sure he has arrived in the present.
Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com> wrote:
> Or is it actually flat and on the back of the big turtle?
No it's not. It's a sphere or at least slightly elliptic, to be more precise.
> Furthermore are there some other, more practical questions I'd like
> to have an answer to.
> Are there any rules how emails should be quoted,
Yes, I believe so.
--
John Doe
As you can see John Doe has done everything rights and cut right to the case. He is also putting a bit more information into his answer regarding earth without having to quote the first part of the question again.
He also has removed the signature of Jane at the end. Most email clients to this automatically, but some don’t. Just remove it manually then.
John also put some blank lines in-between his answers to make it more readable.
Quoting characters¶
Even if it might be very tempting to try to use other characters for marking quoted text, don’t. The pipe | and > are quite standard. Most email clients recognize those automatically as quotes.
The following example is how not to do it:
john> This is supposed to be a quote, but it will not
john> look like this for the client
If you quote like this, no email client will recognise this as quoted text. Therefore no coloring and now automatic hiding av quotes, if the email client has been configured to do so.
Multiple levels of quoting¶
Every now and the discussions can continue over time and can make it necessary to quote from various levels. Then you are not only quoting the one you are answering to, but you also keep a numbers of quotes from the previous messages.
Subject: RE: practical testing
From: Terry Pratchett <terry@example.com>
To: John Doe <john.doe@example.com>
John Doe <john.doe@example.com> wrote:
> Jane Doe <jane.doe@example.com> wrote:
> >
> > Or is it actually flat and on the back of the big turtle?
>
> No, that's not the case.
Haven't read "Discworld"?, Tssk, tssk.
---
Terry
We can see that Terry Pratchett was a smart man and did everything right the first time. He does not quote more than it’s necessary to keep the context of the message.
You can see that the characters for the double-quote consists of two quoting characters with a space after the last one. Something like this: >> double quoted text or > > double quoted text.
None is better than the other. Consistency is the key here to avoid confusion.