My current preferred style of reply is to write replies as self-contained unambiguous answers [1]. It takes maybe a couple seconds of additional thought and ty

My current preferred style of reply is to write replies as self-contained unambiguous answers [1]. It takes maybe a couple seconds of additional thought and typing and the result is far more readable than interleaved. Speaking of which: as a reformed pedant I have to say that interleaved is a style that only a pedant could love. Most emails simply do not contain questions that demand such precise replies, let alone multiple such questions. And certainly no-one other than a fellow pedant will ever, ever appreciate an interleaved response. The tone implicit in its structure is somewhere between nitpicky and borderline-argumentative. Even if you stubbornly insist on absolute precision in your replies, do be aware of what the format is saying. [1] For the "lunch" example in the article, the reply would look something like "I haven't talked to Steve since he left town. Breadsticks sound awesome for Thursday!" with no quote of the original email at all, because the answers are perfectly clear on their own. The cases where Tyler has forgotten what he asked me, or how, are edge cases far more appropriately resolved by threaded email clients and search. There's simply no call to carry detritus into every conversation when the only upside is saving the recipient a two-second search in a tiny minority of cases.