Re: Reply on top or bottom - survey results

[Ed Gregory <edgregory -at- HOME -dot- NET>]

Intrigued by Kathleen Frost's response, I did a quick survey of this list
(via my archive) of
The result is:
Top.........66%
Bottom....33%

Note: Of those who place the quoted material at the top, a substantial
portion - 40% - quoted only a line or two of the original text.

The reason I find this interesting, and important, is that we are in the
business of creating professional communications. If my bosses/clients had
to wade through a mound of quoted materials and headers to find the new
information, they would be very unhappy about wasted time.

To borrow an axiom from my former profession: Put the important news above
the fold.

Kathleen frost disagree with my assertion that is the standard method for
replying to email is to put your response at the top, followed by a snippet
or summary of the original.

At 01:13 PM 8/14/99 -0400, Kathleen Frost wrote:
>Ed Gregory wrote:
>>>The socially accepted standard method for replying to email is to put
your
>>>response at the top, followed by a snippet or summary of the original.
>>>This is because anybody following the thread has already seen the
>original.
>>>Burying your reply at the bottom, like this, forces many people to reread
>material they''ve already read or hit the DELETE key.
>
>I have to disagree.  I see about the same number of messages both ways.
Not
>enough of one method or the other for one to be considered "socially
>acceptable."  Snippets or summaries are either in quotes or marked with
>angle brackets (>>) so it is quickly obvious that the material set off is
>from the original message.
>
>On my other lists, the "snippet" is almost always listed first (more of a
>personal preference than any list wide preference) so everyone knows what
>previous post you are replying to.  Of course, on those lists, there are
>subject tags, like CHAT, TOOLS, GENRE, etc. to help you filter your
messages
>during download, or to allow a sort by subject, so you can decide if you
>want to bother with the thread.
>
>Kathy Frost
>FrostDoc -at- Earthlink -dot- Net
>
>From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000==
>
Ed Gregory
http://www.members.home.net/edgregory/search1.htm

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=