Lost the battle about how to type it, but won the war of display. Convention is now that paragraphs/lines preceded with ">" are rendered with a left border, which is basically the effect you were going for in the first place.
On Sat, Jul 20, 2024, at 3:26 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
I've been using "| " to prefix each quoted line in email.
I've done this since before "> " became a convention.
Perhaps 45 years.
I think that it looks better and clearer.
I've just given up that fight. The trouble is I confuse too many
correspondents who aren't aware of this. And too many of their MUAs.
---