This is a translation of my previous post Etiqueta en el citado de mensajes de e-mail.
Introduction
The most ignored Internet Etiquette rule is that of the posting style when replying to an e-mail message.
By «quoting» I mean the inclusion of a previous message in a new one (for example, a reply) with the intent of stating the relevance of the answer itself in the original context. I would say «Dan, I don’t know what are you talking about. Please quote the original e-mail in your reply next time in order to know what were you replying to.»
Almost every e-mail client do quote the original message in the reply, at least by default. That is good, and it contributes to the «netiquette», but its abuse has made it completely useless.
By saying that the rule is «ignored», I mean that the common user doesn’t edit the text put by the e-mail client as the quote. It leaves the quoted message as is, simply ignoring the resulting text. After three iterations of the answer, the «original message» carries more garbage than relevant content.
Common e-mail clients —like Outlook and Thunderbird— don’t help either; those are pretty stupid. They quote whatever they find. Even when the original goal is to place the original message in the editor ready for its editing while replying, it is also true that signatures and those hideous legal disclaimers are stupidly included also.
Ok. Beyond the rant, the main purpose of this article is to show the current quoting and reply techniques, but more important, to yearn for a style / technique used more than 15 years ago, even before Internet started to be popular in the city where I live.
A correctly applied etiquette to an e-mail reply allows a well-organized message. This etiquette is mainly formed by two elements: (a) the correct placement of the answer in relation to the quoted message and (b) the correct editing of the quoted message.
Reply text placement against the quoted text
The best way to explain this is to mention the three different styles and the difference between them: top-posting, bottom-posting and interposting (or in-line posting). It refers to the placement of the answer before, after or inserted into the original text.
Example A: top-posting
Yes, and I'm going to do it. On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? > > Who's going to execute the changes? > > Regards. > > --- > Hitsuo Tikashi. > Infrastructure Services Manager. > Integrated Systems, Inc. > T. +1 (619) 555-1234 > E. hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx
Example B: bottom-posting
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? > > Who's going to execute the changes? > > Regards. > > --- > Hitsuo Tikashi. > Infrastructure Services Manager. > Integrated Systems, Inc. > T. +1 (619) 555-1234 > E. hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx Yes, and I'm going to do it.
Example C: interposting (or inline-posting)
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? Yes. > > Who's going to execute the changes? I am. > Regards. > > --- > Hitsuo Tikashi. > Infrastructure Services Manager. > Integrated Systems, Inc. > T. +1 (619) 555-1234 > E. hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx
Which one do you think is the best? All of them have pros and cons, so the answer may be different in each environment. What do you think are the pros and cons of each?
For instance, In some mailing lists, top-posting is more than prohibited. Either you do bottom-posting or, better yet, interposting. This has been used since before the existence of e-mail as is known today.
However, in businesses and common use, the most popular style is top-posting, due to the easiness of just «writing and sending» without worrying for anything else; this has moved the MUAs (e-mail clients) to be configured for top-posting out of the box. This, in turn, makes it even more popular.
Proper editing of the quoted text
The last example of interposting made it easy to show how a great part of the reply text is just useless. It is considered that the quoted text is part of the reply, as it occupies disk space as part of the reply.
I’ll use that interposting example as the case to analyze, but the following applies to either of the three quoting styles.
From the word «regards» on, the text is irrelevant, and thus, useless. Maybe we could say that the line «Octavio:» is also irrelevant, but let us not be so picky at the moment. In numbers, 8 out of 21 lines (38%) are useless; so are 25 of the 59 words (42%); and so are 161 of the 373 characters (43%). We still have to take into account that mi reply signature is not there, so that will slightly lower those ratios.
Example D: Proper quoting in top-posting
Yes, and I'm going to do it. On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? > > Who's going to execute the changes? >
Example E: Proper quoting in bottom-posting
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? > > Who's going to execute the changes? > Yes, and I'm going to do it.
Example F: Proper quoting in interposting (or in-line posting)
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > Octavio: > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? Yes. > Who's going to execute the changes? I am.
The main argument for not editing the quoted text would be that it takes a long time to do it and it is done inefficiently. At home, this is called «lazyness».
This will be the argument for those that don’t know the keyboard shortcuts for text editing, in particular the use of the Shift key as a non-written standard to select text. Using Shift and the arrow keys, followed by «Delete», is extremely easy to select and erase useless text.
Yearning for Blue Wave and FidoNet
Before going into user interfaces and mobile devices, I’d like to take a momento to show my yearning feeling for the times where I wrote in FidoNet, even before the Internet started to be popular in Tijuana (1994 to 1996).
In FidoNet, it was common to do this a little different. I used a popular shareware named Blue Wave Offline Reader. Many of us used Blue Wave, which had a particular way of preparing the quoted text before putting it into the editor:
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi said: HT> Octavio: HT> HT> Is the maintenance window next Thursday? HT> HT> Who's going to execute the changes? HT> HT> Regards. HT> HT> --- HT> Hitsuo Tikashi. HT> Infrastructure Services Manager. HT> Integrated Systems, Inc. HT> T. +1 (619) 555-1234 HT> E. hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx
The interesting thing is not in the inline replying. Same as today, a couple of Enters in the right place allowed me to reply in-line.
To erase from «Regards» on, still same as today: I place the cursor in the «R» from «Regards» and Shift+Ctrl+End, Delete and voilà: message is clean.
And so was my answer:
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi said: HT> Octavio: HT> HT> Is the maintenance window next Thursday? Yes. Even thought the changes are not considered to be critical, in case of a possible failure we will affect our service level agreements, because less than 30 days ago our carriers suffered an outage. HT> Who's going to execute the changes? I am.
What is really interesting is that when the original sender tried to reply me back, the text would be automatically adjusted to the line length (properly word wrapped) and quoted in the following way:
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Octavio Alvarez said: HT> Octavio: HT> HT> Is the maintenance window next Thursday? OA> OA> Yes. Even thought the changes are not considered to be critial, in OA> case of a possible failure we will affect our service level OA> agreements, because less than 30 days ago our carriers suffered an OA> outage. Acknowledged. I leave it in your hands and keep me informed. HT> Who's going to execute the changes? OA> OA> I am. BTW, who will monitor and operate the services the next day?
In the example, the user interleaved its answers to me.
Notice how the quoted lines don’t exactly match the original lines. those were modified intelligently, being considered as a paragraph and adjusted to keep a solid and consistent text block.
Also, notice how the text is clear enough and easy to follow; even more if the reader and editor software puts the different authors in different colors.
This style, beyond organized is scalable. After multiple iterations, the format and the text are kept organized.
On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Octavio Alvarez said: HT> Octavio: HT> HT> Is the maintenance window next Thursday? OA> OA> Yes. Even thought the changes are not considered to be critial, in OA> case of a possible failure we will affect our service level OA> agreements, because less than 30 days ago our carriers suffered an OA> outage. HT> HT> Acknowledged. I leave it in your hands and keep me informed. OA> OA> Ok, I'll send you an SMS, according to the procedure. And please send it to me via e-mail, also. HT> Who's going to execute the changes? OA> OA> I am. HT> HT> BTW, who will monitor and operate the services the next day? OA> OA> It would be the new team member, but we have already asked everyone OA> else to be alert and ready in case of any eventuality. Have you exchanged phone numbers yet?
From my point of view, this is much more intelligent than its popular counterpart:
On Mon, Jun 29 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Octavio Alvarez <alvarezp@alvarezp.ods.org> said: > On Sun, Jun 28 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > > On Sat, Jun 27 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Octavio Alvarez <alvarezp@alvarezp.ods.org> said: > > > On Fri, Jun 26 2009 17:42:34 -0700, Hitsuo Tikashi <hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx> said: > > > > Octavio: > > > > > > > > Is the maintenance window next Thursday? > > > > > > Yes. Even thought the changes are not considered to be critial, in > > > case of a possible failure we will affect our service level > > > agreements, because less than 30 days ago our carriers suffered an > > > outage. > > > > Acknowledged. I leave it in your hands and keep me informed. > > Ok, I'll send you an SMS, according to the procedure. And please send it to me via e-mail, also. > > > > Who's going to execute the changes? > > > > > > I am. > > > > BTW, who will monitor and operate the services the next day? > > It would be the new team member, but we have already asked everyone else > to be alert and ready in case of any eventuality. Have you exchanged phone numbers yet?
This is the best the current e-mail practices can get us. It is not bad, but only if the authors and client software follow the etiquette.
If not, we get:
- Badly nested quoting prefixes like: > >> > >>> >
- Badly split lines for exceeding a line length.
- Fully quoted messages, including irrelevant paragraphs.
- HTML garbage from improper tag handling.
- Messages full of signatures and legal texts (sometimes in more than one language per message).
Even though a message from an author that followed the etiquette is a lot better than what we see in a day-to-day basis, i feel it far from the comfort of working in the Blue Wave / FidoNet style.
About user interfaces
E-mail clients fail in promoting the etiquette culture in e-mail messaging.
I think there could be a signature detection mechanism and automatically exclude it from the quoted text. This would save us from getting three copies of the same bulk after three replies:
> --- > Hitsuo Tikashi. > Infrastructure Services Manager. > Integrated Systems, Inc. > T. +1 (619) 555-1234 > E. hitsuo.tikashi@sistint.com.mx > > The content of this e-mail message and its attachments is confidential > and may be protected by Copyright law. It is intended exclusively to the > addressees and them only. If you have received it by mistake, you must > eliminate it from your system. In this case you are not allowed to copy, > print or distribute this e-mail or its attachments nor use them for any > purpose of allowing its contents to be known by any person. The here > included information is not necesarily backed up by [CORPORATION NAME] > or any of its subsidiaries or strategic alliances. > > Please consider the environment before printing this message.
Note: I’ve seen that last line in some messages. I included it because I just couldn’t help myself from using my poor sarcasm after seeing that call for the ecology right after that waste of electricity and disk space (that is usually in HTML format).
Mobile devices
In a 160×320 screen and an itsy bitsy teenie weenie keyboard one could argue that is difficult to do all of this editing in a practical way. However, in the same way new mobile devices present the user an appropriate interface to do other common tasks in a different way, it is the UI that holds how easy or impossible the editing would be.
If in-line posting were popular, a mobile device would have a function or command to «answer below this paragraph» or «navigate by paragraph» and choose «reply, leave or snip» each of them and maybe even an option to «erase the rest of the text».
If the UI doesn’t have it, it is because in-line posting has not been that popular and not requested enough. It is still a deficiency, though.
Conclusions
I’ve tried to show show the style in example F is the most organized and scalable among all possible, based on previous experience from Blue Wave and FidoNet.
Personally, I try to go with the same style that most of the people use in the same context. It’s the best. A people replying with interposting in a mailing list where everybody top-post (for example, at work) will only confuse for everybody.
I have nothing else to say than to throw a call to those that participate in discussion groups, mailing lists (and, in particular those in technical areas) that at least we observe this etiquette guides among ourselves:
- Reply in line to the topics in the original answer.
- Eliminate irrelevant parts of the quoted message. Signatures and legal texts in particular.
- Rearrange illegible paragraphs (word wrapping, for example).
- Use correct spelling and grammar.
- Back our text up with emoticons if confusion might arise.
Thank for the patience to read all the way to here.