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Hi All,There was a thread about this recently - which I cannot find or I would just reply to it. The point I would like to make is that however it is used email is a /communication/ tool and as such Clarity and Accuracy are key. To achieve this communication requires Consistency and Accuracy.
With that in mind, IMHO it does not actually matter /which/ method is used to reply to an email /provided/ the same policy is followed within the same thread; Consistency.
e.g. 1 6 4 2 5 6 3 4 5 4 3 2 5 2 1 6 1 3 The first two columns are easy to follow, the third.. not so much.Accuracy is another issue. I'm sure many of us have been misquoted in emails, particularly on lists. Pretty much every email reply starts with 'On $DATE $PERSON said X' or a variant thereof. The problem with mix and match top and bottom posting is it is very easy to slip up trimming an email and intend to reply to a comment made by X when Y actually made the remark. In the example above it is easy to pick out no. 6, trim nos 1-5, and then quote 6. Not so easy to quote no. 5 in the third column. Also some people - myself included - may pick elements of an email to which they wish to respond; even more of a minefield to check the author's identity before commenting.
I think the RFC often mentioned was written when email clients did nothing except allow the user to reply and they had to deliberately choose to move the cursor to reply anywhere but below the original. Now they do the opposite but members of the old guard, to an extent I include myself, get confused when established netiquette is not adhered to.
Kind regards, Julian -- “The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” ― Thomas Henry Huxley -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq