I hate top posting. I recommend only quoting what's relevant to your message. And quoting in chronological order. Putting the burden on the reader isn't a good idea in a mailing list (there are more readers than writers). Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Top posting with full quoted text retention is for CYA in business situations. Mailing lists are a collaborative mind meld like would be conducted around a table if we were in person. Around a table replies certainly don't come before earlier statements, and if you had to rehash every single bit of the conversation just to make an additional

BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; } On Sun 08/09/24 2:01 PM , Steve Litt via talk talk@gtalug.org sent: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk said on Sun, 8 Sep 2024 01:55:12 -0400 (EDT) point, progress would be impeded by more than an order of magnitude. SteveT I find it difficult to not top post at the moment because Primus' service is messed up and their POP mail is not working. I am accessing it through webmail. The webmail puts my signature at the top of the screen, with the quote down below. There is no command that shortens lines. I suspect I am in rich text (HTML?) mode whether I like it or not. Sending emails in a professional association, I caught crap for bottom posting. The other people were just not used to it. This may be part of Microsoft's determination to change user interfaces in all their applications. Another thing I cannot do with Primus webmail is show email chains. Microsoft Outlook does display that. The problem with bottom posting is that a lot of people do not delete the lines they are not replying to. You scroll down to read the original message, the first reply, the second reply, the third reply, and so on down to some literary gem like "fuck you asshole", probably spelled wrong. There's fifteen minutes of your life you will not be getting back. -- Howard Gibson hgibson@eol.ca http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson