From owner-freebsd-chat Sun May 26 16:28:53 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net (gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.84]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 40DAD37B401 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 16:28:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pool0341.cvx40-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net ([216.244.43.86] helo=mindspring.com) by gull.prod.itd.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #2) id 17C7RF-0003uJ-00; Sun, 26 May 2002 16:28:38 -0700 Message-ID: <3CF16F86.A6E241B0@mindspring.com> Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 16:28:06 -0700 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Sony} (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: Mike Meyer , rob , "chat@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: Bottom-quoting (was Re: My friends were amazed at FreeBSD...) References: <20020524143036.C67484@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20020524164101.P51722-100000@muheleja.eenet.ee> <20020524163603.L81843@lpt.ens.fr> <3CEECD6A.5E9BB6A6@pythonemproject.com> <20020525175149.A69827@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.2665.379231.456776@guru.mired.org> <20020526173949.GA230@lpt.ens.fr> <15601.10022.167754.574044@guru.mired.org> <20020526183504.GA472@lpt.ens.fr> <3CF165D4.A7C8E6F4@mindspring.com> <20020526225326.GB1562@lpt.ens.fr> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Terry Lambert said on May 26, 2002 at 15:46:44: > > Business letters and other so-called "snail mail" has evolved > > certain formate structures for the data contained therein so > > that people can operate with certain assumptions, thereby > > making their lives easier. Email has done the same, even if > > people have been slow to recognize this fact. > > Funny you should say that. All business-related or official email I > receive, without exception -- secretaries, banks, officials, whatever > -- uses bottom-quoting. I in turn bottom-quote when I reply to them. > That's what they're used to, they operate with that assumption, and it > makes their lives easier (as you nicely put it) -- while I'm used to > both forms so it doesn't matter to me. (Exception: when I'm replying > to a very specific point which is a small part of their long mail, I > top-quote that point.) You are wrong. I said "business letters", not "business email". We are talking about ettiquite in archived email discussions, not ettiquite in physical letters. Also not that I have already made the point that email style is often dictated by tools, rather than by appropriateness to the task. I would argue that the bottom-quoting you are seeing is an artifact of the mail user agent being used by these people, which I would wager is Microsoft Outlook, since you have identified these people as business persons. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message