cathyandgarth

I have noticed that some people quote what they are responding to
first, some do it after. Yahoo message boards are a bit different
that other boards I have participated in, so I am wondering is there
are any unwritten guidelines for making it easier for everyone to
understand what you are responding to, etc...?

Cathy

Sandra Dodd

> -=-I have noticed that some people quote what they are responding to
> first, some do it after. Yahoo message boards are a bit different
> that other boards I have participated in, so I am wondering is there
> are any unwritten guidelines for making it easier for everyone to
> understand what you are responding to, etc...?-=-


The default, I think, is that the post you're referring to comes
after, but because lots of people are on digest, the courteous thing
to do is to delete all the business below your own writing.

I cut and paste the part I want to respond to and I try to remember
to do -=-these little marks-=- around it because some people's e-mail
programs or settings show the quote marked somehow and others
don't. What worked for a long time with e-mail was carret/karat/
whatever-they're-called marks before and after, like pointy brackets,
like French quotation marks— but because of HTML on yahoogroups ,
those disappear.

In any case, don't quote more than you need to, and don't append a
whole post, and don't append a whole digest, if you can remember to
edit it down.

I like to leave the quote above what I write so that it reads more
like a dialog, personally. And if I'm just adding my comments
without it being to a particular line or paragraph, I don't put
anything in at all. Often I take out the who-wrote-what-and-when
line, because it doesn't matter who wrote what, usually. And
sometimes someone else quoted another post, and if I cut from that it
cites the wrong writer. <g>

Sandra