"After all, everyone has their plaintext style" This is counter to my own experience. I am using (plain text) email since 27 years. Including inline quoting an

"After all, everyone has their plaintext style" This is counter to my own experience. I am using (plain text) email since 27 years. Including inline quoting and avoiding top posting at all costs. People used bold (not sure how to render a '*' in HN) /italic/ and _underscore_ consistently on lists, newsgroups and -- rarely, as seldomly needed -- in private correspondence. I learned how to do this by example. Everyone being very disciplined about this in the 90's still. This started deteriorating rapidly in the wake of eternal September [1] and Outlook becoming the standard client in the corporate world, using HTML as default. Personally I blame Outlook for HTML email hell foremost. It is very simple to display plain text email, omitting aforementioned formatters and applying them. The same goes for displaying in a proportional font (detecting intended indentations from the original and replicating them with tabs, on the fly). Using such formatters is just another (and not even alien) form of inline markup. Actually the very one that inspired markdown, ReST, etc. The only reason people use HTML email is that it's the default. Not that it's better in any way. The average user simply doesn't know any better. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September