Top Posting Makes The Theoanthropos Cry

Chris · 28 Aug 2006, 11:47 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:47:30 +0000
Subject: (urth) Top Posting Makes The Theoanthropos Cry
In-Reply-To: <44F1FF19.2000904 at io.com>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F325E386F3E8773E410A3FE86380 at phx.gbl>

I generally don't find top-posting hard to follow (yes, I'm doing this on 
purpose), especially on a relatively low-volume list where the post that's 
being responded to is fairly recognizable. I save interleaving for posts 
that have individual points that need to be addressed separately. To 
interleave on a post like this, for example, I would have to sit there and 
selectively prune out the text that wasn't directly relevant to my response; 
this can sometimes lead to a pretty confusing, mangled post. On the other 
hand if you don't prune you end up with two pages of quoted text with a 
single-sentence response at the bottom that can be easily mistaken for a sig 
- posts like that usually go in the trash bin without being read.

>People (I won't embarass Bob, Iorwerth, Dan'l, or Matthew by mentioning
>their names),
>
>Please lay off the top-posting; it makes your posts very hard to follow.
>Even if your mail program puts your cursor at the top of the quoted
>material to which you are replying, there is nothing to stop you from
>moving to the bottom before beginning to type in your received wisdom,
>and following the conventional flow of reading down columns of English
>eases the reader's eye.
>
>You can read more about it here:
>http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html
>
>Thanks,
>Jeff
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