OT: netiquette *was* How do I eliminate large spaces

[Guest guest]

> On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 03:19:01PM -0400, Masterjohn wrote:

> For what it's worth, it is incredibly annoying to read posts where the

> backquoted text isn't distinguished from the new text with arrows

I like ONE arrow per line, or at least *something* that distinguishes

one from the other.

However.......case in point:

> > > > Both humans and animals eat food, so eating cooked food :

eating

> > > food

> > > > :: drinking milk after infancy : drinking milk. While email

and

This just hurts my head when I have to scroll through a long email

containing this mess and then to find the response all the way down at

the very bottom!

Yes, I'm picky or as friend describs me, " persnickety " .

Everyone has their preferences. There's no way to please everyone and

their particular styles of reading, I don't expect anyone to change to

please me, as there are many who find my preferences unbearable or

silly. But I do believe that it's the little things that count, such as

neatness and trimming of posts. :-))

--

[Guest guest]

On 7/20/05, RVT <minatoneshoba@...> wrote:

> > On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 03:19:01PM -0400, Masterjohn wrote:

> > For what it's worth, it is incredibly annoying to read posts where the

> > backquoted text isn't distinguished from the new text with arrows

> I like ONE arrow per line, or at least *something* that distinguishes

> one from the other.

It's silly to restrict the number of arrows. They should just follow

the universal convention: one arrow per number of replies since the

text was written. In most cases there isn't much reason to backquote

beyond the last email, but sometimes there is. I normally would have

deleted my backquoted text above, but I saved it to make a point:

Were there only one arrow per line in both backquotes, your text would

be indistinguishable from mine. I went through the 2 seconds to

delete the arrows at the blank spaces, which I think makes it more

readable.

> However.......case in point:

>

> > > > > Both humans and animals eat food, so eating cooked food :

> eating

> > > > food

> > > > > :: drinking milk after infancy : drinking milk. While email

> and

Well this is very poorly backquoted. I don't think this is a problem

with backquoting; it's a problem with text wrapping. I don't know why

this happens, but if it happens to me I fix it manually.

> Everyone has their preferences. There's no way to please everyone and

> their particular styles of reading, I don't expect anyone to change to

> please me, as there are many who find my preferences unbearable or

> silly. But I do believe that it's the little things that count, such as

> neatness and trimming of posts. :-))

I think there are pretty objective ways to look at which practices

enhance readability the most. There might be some little details that

can vary, of course, but, for example, it is unambiguously clear that

having different numbers of arrows preceding the text that is quoted

from *different* posts enhances readability much more than having only

one arrow before all backquoted text.

The poor backquoted text you included as an example is certainly poor,

but the problem is not the number of arrows. It's the sloppiness and

deranged format of the post, which is a glitch in the text wrapping

system that the person was using. Unfortunately that person didn't

take the care to fix it.

Chris