Offtopic noise: Re: BBC iPlayer viewers now need a...

Owen Smith owen.smith at cantab.net
Mon May 16 12:58:04 PDT 2016


This is indeed the "modern" way to do replies, and email clients like my iPad make it very hard work to do anything else. But the argument against this is that someone seeing it fresh (eg. CC an extra recipient) has to read the entire email backwards (bottom to top) to get the context.

25 years ago you always replied to emails by adding your text to the bottom, or replying inline in the quotes, and email clients expected it to be done that way. I'm not entirely sure when this changed, but I get the feeling Microsoft had a lot to do with it.

-- 
Owen Smith <owen.smith at cantab.net>
Cambridge, UK

> On 16 May 2016, at 20:38, tellyaddict <tellyaddict21 at gmx.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> I don't think that was quite what Dennis meant. Obviously a reply like you've just done needs to be done in that way to make any sense.
> 
> I was taught when I first started using this list that you were supposed to post new replies at the top of the email with the message you are replying to underneath.
> 
> I also find it harder to read messages that are sent to the list where the old message is at the top with the reply underneath. When you reply to any other email, the person replying will usually put their response at the top with the old responses underneath so it makes sense to me to do the same here.
> 
>> I guess you won't be reading these replies then, all of which have
>> been nicely spaced out and responded to each of your points in turn,
>> at the relevant point, instead of all in one go at the top where the
>> reader then has to guess which reply was to which point.
> 
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