Re: Trimming quotes

[James Harkins <jamshark70@gmail.com>]

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On Dec 29, 2012 11:23 PM, "Thomas S. Dye" <tsd@tsdye.com> wrote:
> Can you point me to trimming guidelines for digest readers?

I don't know where to find published guidelines, but this is how I try to
handle it:

- Quote just enough to capture the gist of what you're replying to. (As
here -- I'm answering a specific question, so I quote the question and trim
out the rest.) Sometimes that calls for just a couple of lines, or it might
need a longer chunk (of a code example, say). The thread I pointed to would
have needed some longer quotes.

- Quotes from messages earlier than the one you're directly answering
should be avoided, but if you need material from an older message to get
the gist, keep it really really short. (E.g., if you're quoting a long code
snip from the previous message, there is no need to include the same code
snip in higher quote levels.)

- Avoid top-posting. Top-posting allows you to ignore the amount of quoted
material beyond the mail editor window's lower boundary. You have no idea
if it's 30, 50, 200 or over 1000 lines. (I know some have reasons to prefer
top-posting and I don't want to reopen that debate, but it seems a valid
observation that excessively long quotes usually come with top-posted
replies. So an alternate way to say it is: If you really want to top-post,
please also review the entire contents for redundancy before sending.)

hjh

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