Keep in trim
(Many thanks to David for this suggestion.)
If you’re replying to a posting in a mailing list – or indeed to an email which is part of an ongoing discussion – please consider carefully how much of the preceding discussion you need to quote in your reply.
It’s very easy to hit the reply button and write and send your own posting, forgetting that there have been several postings before yours which are all reproduced just below what you’ve typed. But this is bad practice, for at least three reasons:
- It doesn’t look neat.
- The reader has to scroll down to find out what the posting is replying to.
- It makes for very long emails, particularly once you’ve got beyond the third posting – by which time you’ve got the third posting twice, the second one three times, and the original posting four times!
So do your reader(s) a favour – trim the unneeded repeat emails from your reply. Remember, if you don’t you’ll only get them all again when someone else posts…
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June 3rd, 2007 at 10:13 UTC
It’s the same on a discussion forum. It’s very tedious to have to read or scroll through the same darned thing time and time again. Sometimes the post will be a great long screed which is longer than the reply, especially if the reply is only to say, “I agree” or something similar. Quote sparingly and only when necessary.