TopPosting !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lorenzo Taylor daxlinux at gmail.com
Wed Apr 16 03:35:09 UTC 2008


It has been said far too many times in this thread that top posting
violates the natural order of reading messages. This isn't entirely
true, cince *all* quoting whether it appears at the top or at the bottom
of a post is repetative. The question has already been asked once, no
matter how many times it's repeated. So why do we quibble over where in
the message the question is repeated? The person who asked the question
knows what he or she asked, and anyone interested in the topic has
already read the question. The *only* time quoting is necessary is if a
specific part of a post needs to be repeated for the context of a reply
to make sense. And this repetition should be as short as possible.
Maybe, as a previous poster said, we don't read letters or books
backward, but what if the second chapter of a book repeated the entire
first chapter and the third repeated the entire first two chapters and
on until the end of the book. In short, the book would never end. And in
writing a series of books, what author do you know of that requotes the
entire first book before beginning the sequel in the same volume? This
just doesn't happen. We should all write our messages as sequels. Quote
only where necessary to put the reply in context and make your message
clear enough that one need not refer to previous posts or quotes to make
your reply make sense. And yes, if quoting is used, which should be
rarely, the quote should precede the response.

Another $0.02 for ya,
Lorenzo
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