MJ Ray wrote:
Whole-quoting *and* top-posting are *both* irritating habits.
It is of course a matter of taste which method you use to reply to emails. But it does help the flow of a conversation if everyone sticks to the same method. I find inline(?) replies like this to be the best, they make it clear exactly what you're replying to, especially when there are several participants in the coversation.
Please take the time to cut the email which provokes your reply down to what is needed and nothing more.
I agree, the quote only really needs to be a reference point to what you're replying to, there's no need to quote the entire message as people have hopefully already read that.
I remind people that whole-quoting may even be a breach of copyright in some cases (albeit minor), while quoting a small amount for commentary or criticism is fair dealing.
Hmm. Surely downloading the message from your mail server is technically making a full copy of the author's original work without their express consent, as is reading a web page which gets copied into your cache. IMHO this is far too ambiguous to be seriously considered as infringing Copyright, if you send an email to a mailing list you've got to expect this kind of behaviour. Having said that, I hardly make a secret about my opinions on the flaws of Copyright law when applied to modern digital mediums.