5 ms·
This is the truth. Want to look like a pro in email? Plain text, bottom posted, trimmed. Replying wherever the email app happens to leave the cursor is like d
by lproven 3y ago
This is the truth.
Want to look like a pro in email? Plain text, bottom posted, trimmed.
Replying wherever the email app happens to leave the cursor is like driving down the road wherever your car happened to be pointing. It's antisocial, stupid, and makes the experience much worse for everyone. Learn to drive. Learn to email.
- CharlesW 3y ago> Want to look like a pro in email? Plain text, bottom posted, trimmed. Top posted + interleaved quoting, ya' filthy animals.
- tptacek 3y agoSerious question: why do I want to "look like a pro in email"?
- johnea 3y agoYou'd rather look like an amateur?
- eli 3y agoI'm not sure I want the styling of my email to be especially noteworthy
- MobiusHorizons 3y agoIt is worth considering that every interaction you have tells other people something about you. Many people don’t spend much time thinking about what small choices say about them, but they always tell a story whether you want them to or not. Sometimes it can be a good idea to optimize those messages (especially in a professional context). I would argue that it is much more important what you write, rather than where you write it, but everything says something, and what it says is very context dependent.
- tptacek 3y agoWhat kind of person am I interacting with that cares about email this way? It's certainly not customer prospects or investors, both of whom have HTML email junk you wouldn't believe.
- eli 3y agoInsofar as that’s true, I do not think I want plaintext. Especially if it’s a message that would otherwise have inline links or images or any sort of rich text. I would like the content of my emails to be memorable. Not an unusual UX. Maybe if I were trying to cultivate an image as a slightly eccentric techie.
- tptacek 3y agoI'm wondering why I'd care either way.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> Replying wherever the email app happens to leave the cursor .. It's antisocial, stupid, and makes the experience much worse for everyone. Bottom posting is even more antisocial if your recipient is likely to be using a client that always opens the email with only the top visible. I agree that bottom posting is best but your ire should be directed at the makers of the mail clients not the users.
- asimpletune 3y agoWhat is bottom posting? Like the ordering of replies?
- jcranmer 3y agoThis is paraphrased from some old Usenet sig lines: A: Because it messes with the flow of the conversation. Q: Why is it bad? A: Posting your reply above the text you are quoting. Q: What is top-posting?
- teekert 3y agoHaha good one! Most mail clients do top posting but then go through elaborate tricks to order the conversation top to bottom. I never though about it but it’s weird indeed.
- CharlesW 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jabroni_salad 3y agoSorry, top posting has won. You are going to reply to a business person, and they're going to think you forgot to write anything when their own message is at the top. Also, I like that when I get added to a chain, the entire context comes with it. If you trim it, it automatically becomes an XY problem to my point of view.
- sph 3y agoHi Dave, My answers below. > yadda yadda blah blah --- Works like a charm. Messes up the quotation if some people top-quote and other bottom-quote in the same conversation, but do people in 2024 seriously read the quoted text when every halfway decent email client remembers the entire conversation and/or thread? Quoted text is noise anyway, especially if coming from laymen with Outlook with half a dozen lines of disclaimers, logo and signatures repeated and quoted every email.
- jcranmer 3y ago> do people in 2024 seriously read the quoted text when every halfway decent email client remembers the entire conversation and/or thread? Sometimes new people get added onto threads after they've been going on for a while, and then those people have to read the quoted history to understand the context.
- BadHumans 3y agoBottom posting is weird and I hate it.
- wt__ 3y agoI do a mix of both. Top posting when I’m making a general comment, but if I’m responding to several questions, I pare the original mail back as much as possible and reply underneath each. My logic is there isn’t any benefit to bottom posting if all you’re doing is making someone scroll. Also, I refuse to ever use a signature or Out of Office reply. (Full disclosure: I only use public transport.)
- eynsham 3y agoWhat’s wrong with interleaving?