Quotes in replies

[Carl S Zimmerman]

May I appeal to all subscribers to be careful and considerate in your 
editing when replying to others' postings? Readers who have email 
clients different from/to yours may have considerable difficulty in 
distinguishing between material which you quote and your reply to it. 
That's especially true if you are relying on differences in 
color/colour or typeface (e.g., bold or italics, or an entirely 
different font) versus "normal" text. Many email clients simply do 
not display anything except plain text, so that your intended 
distinctions will be entirely invisible to their users.

At a minimum, please do at least one of the following:
- put a blank line between adjacent quotes and replies
- bracket and initial your response [a la CD]
- use a consistent style of your choice that will be visible to 
readers of plain text
- make sure that any plain text quotation marking (e.g., leading 
">") is consistent throughout the quoted material; repair any damage 
that may have occurred through line wrapping along the way.

For those subscribers who are habitually careful in their editing, thank you!
For all others, thank you for your consideration of this important 
matter. Any communication requires both a sender and a receiver; 
effective communication requires the sender to consider the message 
from the receiver's viewpoint.

Carl