# Email posting style



## jrm@ (Mar 10, 2014)

In academic, business and (most) personal circles, top posting is the conventional posting style.  Do you agree?  If so, should we just conform (when in Rome...), or continue being the nerds who do everything weird?


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## trh411 (Mar 10, 2014)

I have no opinion on the matter.


			
				jrm said:
			
		

> In academic, business and (most) personal circles, top posting is the conventional posting style.  Do you agree?  If so, should we just conform (when in Rome...), or continue being the nerds who do everything weird?


Does that surprise anyone?


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## fonz (Mar 10, 2014)

jrm said:
			
		

> Do you agree?



A: Because it screws up the way in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top posting so *FRACKING* annoying?
A: Top posting.
Q: What's the most annoying thing in e-mail?






Top posters should be dragged out and shot. Or hanged. Or quartered. Or decapitated. Or burned at the stake. Or cast in concrete and dropped into the ocean. Or fired into the sun. Or any combination thereof, for good measure. Concentrated sulfuric acid might help, napalm probably works better.


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## jrm@ (Mar 10, 2014)

fonz said:
			
		

> Top posters should be dragged out and shot. Or hanged. Or quartered. Or decapitated. Or burned at the stake. Or cast in concrete and dropped into the ocean. Or fired into the sun. Or any combination thereof, for good measure. Concentrated sulphuric acid might help, napalm probably works better.



So, to be clear, you're saying you _do not_ prefer top posting?

Seriously, I'm with you, but when you're in a conversation with five other people (some of them your superiors) and you're the only one bottom (or for certain key points, interleave) posting there is strong pressure to conform.  Aside from technology mailing lists and these forums, everyone else I communicate with top posts, so I was just wondering if everyone else switches when talking with _normal_  people.  Maybe instead of conforming I should just find new friends and colleagues.


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## obsigna (Mar 10, 2014)

fonz said:
			
		

> ...Top posters should be dragged out and shot. Or hung. Or quartered. Or decapitated. Or all of those, for good measure. Concentrated sulphuric acid might work, too.





			
				André Brie said:
			
		

> Die grauen Zellen der Dogmatiker sind absolut ausbruchsicher.
> (engl.) The gray cells of the dogmatists are absolutely escape-proof.



At times top posting is appropriate, other times bottom posting is better, and sometimes even none of both, but answering within the lines of the original post is best. I switch my posting style liberally according to the actual communication needs.

For example, top posting is the style of choice when two or more sides need to accompany and synchronize a multistep process. All parties are mostly aware about what happened in the past, and need to be informed about the next step in the process - the export/import procedure of some goods from one country into another comes to mind. The involved parties don't want to read the whole history again and again, only for being informed about the next step in the process. Nonetheless, it is nice to keep the documentation about the process  in one digest.


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## fonz (Mar 10, 2014)

jrm said:
			
		

> So, to be clear, you're saying you _do not_ prefer top posting?


You are quite perceptive...



			
				jrm said:
			
		

> when you're in a conversation with five other people (some of them your superiors) and you're the only one bottom (or for certain key points, interleave) posting there is strong pressure to conform.


I partially agree. Whether tilting at this particular windmill (i.e. trying to educate others) is a lost cause depends on who else is/are in the conversation. But hell has to freeze over before I'll agree to start top posting myself. Unless there's some wiggle room for witty recalcitrance, e.g. starting to write in bare LaTeX or HTML and pointing out it's still better than top posting  §e


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## fonz (Mar 10, 2014)

obsigna said:
			
		

> The involved parties don't want to read the whole history again and again, only for being informed about the next step in the process.


Ah, there's a catch: trimming replies down to relevant parts is becoming a lost art. When someone thinks it's a good idea to quote an entire discussion just to add one lousy remark, it doesn't make much of a difference any more whether one uses top, bottom or interleaved posting.


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## obsigna (Mar 10, 2014)

fonz said:
			
		

> ... When someone thinks it's a good idea to quote an entire discussion just to add one lousy remark, it doesn't make much of a difference any more whether one uses top, bottom or interleaved posting.



In business this is the most convenient way to conform to the requirements of Process Traceability. However, again, it depends on the kind of conversation:


In replies to something I tend to use bottom posting.
 
In proceeds of something, I tend to use top posting.
 
In answering a lot of questions, I tend to interleave.


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## Carpetsmoker (Mar 10, 2014)

The problem is, in Outlook (and related Outlook Express, Windows Mail), you can't configure your mail client *not* to top-post (oh, how I have I tried). I think this, in a very large part, contributed to the top-posting pandemic. Anyone even remotely considering to top-post on a forum (such as this) would be considered bonkers. How is email different?


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 10, 2014)

I'm with @fonz. The kidz have ruined the Internet.


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## freethread (Mar 10, 2014)

drhowarddrfine said:
			
		

> I'm with @fonz. The kidz have ruined the internet.



The kidz were taught.


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## scottro (Mar 10, 2014)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> The problem is, in Outlook (and related Outlook Express, Windows Mail), you can't configure your mail client *not* to top-post (oh, how I have I tried). I think this, in a very large part, contributed to the top-posting pandemic.



No, this can't be blamed on Microsoft.  In this case, I'm going to (most respectfully) disagree. This is sheer freakin' laziness.  Mutt also puts the cursor at the top.  That's fine, that's where I want it, I want to be able to go through the message and use inline posting. (Bottom posting, as has been said, can also be misused - trimming is really more important than anything, IMHO.)  I remember my early Internet days, and being on a martial arts mailing list where there was someone who would consistently reply to a 200 line post with "Good post," or "I agree."  Although most of the folks were on AOL, in those days (late '90s?) no one top posted.

While there's lots to blame on Microsoft and other GUI oriented programs, the inherent laziness, and rudeness, if you think about it (the top poster isn't considerate enough to consider taking a few more seconds to use the down arrow) of top posting isn't their fault.

@@freethread, no, they weren't taught, that's the problem.


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## freethread (Mar 10, 2014)

scottro said:
			
		

> @freethread, no, they weren't taught, that's the problem.



Taught in the wrong way (in my very own opinion).


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## tingo (Mar 10, 2014)

If you top post and/or do no trim your quotes - you are just being LAZY. No two bits about it. So stop being LAZY (or a sheep that just follows others).


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## fonz (Mar 10, 2014)

Admittedly, my first post in this thread was a bit over the top (it was indeed slightly exaggerated for comic effect), but let there be no mistake: top posting bugs the hell out of me.

I agree with @Carpetsmoker (and thus disagree with @scottro). Bottom or interleaved posting used to be the norm until Microsoft blew everything to hell with Outlook. Moreover, it's not a matter of where the cursor is being placed. Outlook doesn't (or at least didn't for a long time) prefix quotes (the > bits), making interleaved posting almost impossible. So yes, Microsoft is to blame. Very much so, actually.

I do think that ubiquity is another factor. In the early days people who weren't at universities or big companies had to access the Internet by dialling in over phone lines, which cost them time and money. Which in turn was an incentive to observe proper netiquette. Nowadays, with broadband and flat-rate, many people either can't be arsed to observe netiquette or aren't even aware that such a thing exists in the first place.


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## Carpetsmoker (Mar 10, 2014)

It's also impossible to place the signature at the bottom of the message in Outlook; It's always on top.

(And probably more UI thingies that at least discourage bottom-posting. I really don't want to go down memory lane to the days I was forced to use Outlook, they are *not* happy memories.)


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## phoenix (Mar 10, 2014)

jrm said:
			
		

> fonz said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That's when you just leave your answer underneath the top-most entry and delete everything else in the message.  It's what I do at work.

Everyone claims "it's so you can see the most current data right away without paging down", which is useful if there's only a single reply.  Once you get a message with 15 replies in it, it becomes very hard to read the history and decipher what people are talking about.

Top-posting would be okay if people would trim replies.  But, nobody can spare the extra five seconds that would take.


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## phoenix (Mar 10, 2014)

Carpetsmoker said:
			
		

> The problem is, in Outlook (and related Outlook Express, Windows Mail), you can't configure your mail client *not* to top-post (oh, how I have I tried). I think this, in a very large part, contributed to the top-posting pandemic. Anyone even remotely considering to top-post on a forum (such as this) would be considered bonkers. How is email different?



GMail is another major offender here.  All replies start out top-posted with the signature at the top (especially in the mobile version) and it's hard to make it work any other way.  At least with the web version of GMail it is possible to configure things to bottom-post replies.


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## ronaldlees (Mar 10, 2014)

I always need to remember to top post for my 81 year old Internet addict mum! She'll have it only that way.


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