[Tfug] top/bottom and middle posting

[Claude Rubinson]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 09:16:26AM -0600, Tim Ottinger wrote:
> But if he wishes to be understood, he might try to speak reasonably
> well in the language of the listener.

Really, I think that this is the important point with regard to email
discussions.  Some people have talked about top posting being fine,
because they've been keeping up with the entire thread.  But that's
not always the case.  Email gets delivered asynchronously, so there's
always the chance that your response will arrive before the original
message.  People jump in and out of threads and threads branch.
Killfiles mean that people won't see the entire thread.

Providing context means that people will be able to understand what
you're saying.  Not providing context or obscuring the context in some
manner (e.g., by top-posting or bottom-posting/not trimming the
original message) makes it more likely for people to ignore you.  If
you make it easy to read your email, I'll almost always read it.  But
if it's at all difficult, whether I read it is really dependent upon
my mood.  If I'm really interested in the thread, I might.  If I've
got a bunch of unread email to get through, I'm likely to just delete
it.

What I always tell my students is that I don't grade on grammar or
spelling per se.  But if I can't understand what they're saying, I
won't bother.  I simply skip the sentence, their argument gets weaker,
and they ultimately lose points.  If the writer wants to be
understood, it's their responsibility to be clear.

Claude