You know, before top posting was a thing, you actually edited the parts you were replying to so that only the bits you addressed remained in your mail. And if y

You know, before top posting was a thing, you actually edited the parts you were replying to so that only the bits you addressed remained in your mail. And if you addressed several parts, you separated them, so that it was clear which part of your mail addressed which part of your correspondent's. No re-reading of every reply was necessary, of course. If you hadn't read it before, you could read the quoted parts in full, otherwise it took a mere glance to remind you of exactly what was being replied to. This made reading emails fast, since you could easily be reminded of the context within a few hundred milliseconds, but also had details immediately available in case you had forgotten. These days, that's impossible, of course. You get a reply, and have to dig back in memory for what's being replied to, because of course the 1200 pixel signature and legalese in the footer will have pushed the replied to part off the screen. And when, after some scrolling and clicking, you find the original message, it's of course impossible to know exactly which part of the original mail is being addressed in the reply, since with top posting, there's no way of connecting your reply to the specific part you're replying to.