Top-posting &c.

[Prasad, Ramit]

> > I also tend to blame M$ (Outlook and variants) for this tendency to
> > quote everything and top-post -- Outlook makes it almost impossible
> > to do a trim&interleave response style.
> 
> I that Outlook & Co are guilty. That and the fact that few people even
> think about this.

Nonsense, I post only from Outlook. You can do it and it is not hard.
It is just requires a little effort. 

Top posting makes more sense in a corporate setting for a couple reasons. 
Seeing the exact email trail rather than what someone considers "relevant" 
context can be very useful. Not to mention that frequently corporate email 
is more like slow instant messaging; I need less context (e.g. 
conversation  history) and get all the information I need from what the 
sender is writing. 

I find inline (and to a lesser extent bottom) posting to be a mixed bag. 
Some people do it well and it is easy to read, but there are others who 
do not make it as easy (for me) to read. Lots of posts are not trimmed 
enough, or trimmed too much. 

I am not advocating top-posting. I just think that different styles are 
good for different cases/environments. Blame the person, not the 
application for having poor habits and/or being inconsiderate of the 
community. :)

Ramit

P.S. Ironically, I do blame Outlook for making it hard (impossible?) 
to find/see the 80 char boundary.
This email is confidential and subject to important disclaimers and
conditions including on offers for the purchase or sale of
securities, accuracy and completeness of information, viruses,
confidentiality, legal privilege, and legal entity disclaimers,
available at http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/disclosures/email.