- What is Quoting?
- Whenever you respond to a newsgroup posting, most newsgroup client
software will include the text of the message to which you are
responding. Generally each line of the original message is prefixed with
a ">" or similar character. This is intended to provide the reader of
the message enough context to understand your response.
- Is this desirable?
- Yes and no. It's desirable to give the reader some context to your
response, but it is often unnecessary and wasteful to include the entire
response in each and every reply.
- What's wrong with including the entire response?
- A number of reasons. First or all, most newsreader software will
clearly include the original messages with the replies. This makes it
unnecessary to include the original text in the response. Second,
including the entire response clutters up the message with a lot of
redundant information. Finally, this duplicates messages countless times
on every newsgroup server, which wastes a lot of network resources.
Since many people (especially outside the United States) pay for their
internet connection by the minute, these endless duplicate messages
actually directly cost them money.
- What is the proper way to quote?
- Trim down the original post to just a few lines. You generally want
to include enough text to show context without cutting so much that you
might as well not have quoted at all.
- Isn't it wrong to trim down the original text?
- Nope, most people will thank you for it. In fact, personally I
almost never look at the original text at all. In newsgroups, if you
want the original message you can just look earlier in the thread.
- Won't the original author be annoyed to have his words truncated?
- Again, no, for the same reasons.
- Isn't something lost when the original text is reduced?
- You do run the risk of losing something, but that's really not an
issue if you do the trimming properly and perhaps word your reply
correctly.
- What do you do when you are replying to something that already
includes quoted text?
- Your newsreader client will most likely handle this automatically
for you by adding another set of ">"'s to the quoted text.
- Can you show me an example?
- Of course. One is shown below.
>> Talk about coincidence! Of course, probably everyone in
>> Poland is named Wojtas, so this sort of thing maybe happens
>> every day.
>
>The world is very big and sometimes strange things happen.
>
I know, I know! That's why we make it our business here to
explain strange things so folks will understand what's
really going on!
- Does the quoted text go above or below the reply text?
- Some people put it above the reply. The logic is that the most
important thing, the reply, then appears first. Many people put the
answer below the quoted text, which makes the message look much better.
- But doesn't that mean people have to wade through the quoted text
to get to my reply?
- Only if you do not do a good job of trimming.
Unless otherwise noted, all photos and text is Copyright © Richard G Lowe, Jr.
