Re: [O] Trimming quotes

[James Harkins]

On Dec 29, 2012 11:23 PM, "Thomas S. Dye" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Can you point me to trimming guidelines for digest readers?

I don't know where to find published guidelines, but this is how I try to handle it:

- Quote just enough to capture the gist of what you're replying to. (As here -- I'm answering a specific question, so I quote the question and trim out the rest.) Sometimes that calls for just a couple of lines, or it might need a longer chunk (of a code example, say). The thread I pointed to would have needed some longer quotes.

- Quotes from messages earlier than the one you're directly answering should be avoided, but if you need material from an older message to get the gist, keep it really really short. (E.g., if you're quoting a long code snip from the previous message, there is no need to include the same code snip in higher quote levels.)

- Avoid top-posting. Top-posting allows you to ignore the amount of quoted material beyond the mail editor window's lower boundary. You have no idea if it's 30, 50, 200 or over 1000 lines. (I know some have reasons to prefer top-posting and I don't want to reopen that debate, but it seems a valid observation that excessively long quotes usually come with top-posted replies. So an alternate way to say it is: If you really want to top-post, please also review the entire contents for redundancy before sending.)

hjh