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Re: reading list mail

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From: Jared Smith
Date: Aug 3, 2011 1:06PM

Thanks Lucy. The debate over top-posting vs. bottom-posting will never
be resolved. While you make a good argument for top posting, there are
many advantages to bottom posting. If only Joe Clark were still around
to provide his opinion on the matter. :-)

For those that may not be familiar, top posting is the practice of
writing your response at the top of the message you are responding to,
while including the entire previous message (and probably any previous
messages) within, but at the bottom of your e-mail. Bottom posting
means including the previous message(s) at the top of your response
and adding your comments at the bottom.

For accessibility and usability reasons, BOTH approaches are bad. The
duplication of the entire previous message(s) is not necessary and
makes the message much more difficult to consume and less accessible.

We recommend that when responding to a message, that you remove the
original message from your reply e-mail. It is easy for list
subscribers to find the previous e-mail if they choose to review it.
Any e-mail program worth using can easily thread messages. If there
are particular portions of the message you want to reference
specifically, trim the message to only the relevant portions, then
include these brief quoted portions inline or at the top of your
message. Whether you use the standard > character or some other
designation to indicate the quotation shouldn't matter.

Deleting the previous message or trimming to the relevant portions
also helps keep the online list archives
(http://webaim.org/discussion/archives) user friendly and accessible.

Thanks all.

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org