E-mail style (was Re: Tek 4014/5 emulation)

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Sat Jun 17 14:03:26 2000

ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:
> Seriously, unless there are very good reasons not to, people who send me
> HTML mail get ignored (especially if they're asking me for help). And
> this will continue.

Tony's getting close to the point here: when you post to a mailing
list or a newsgroup, you're writing for an audience. If you want your
message to be read, you should make it easy for that audience to read
the message. Else you run the risk that your audience will not
bother, there being 72 other unread messages in the classiccmp in-box
this morning.

If what you're going on about isn't obvious to me somewhere in the
first screenful or two, I'm going to hit the 'n' key and move along.
Putting something relevant in the Subject: header can help me make a
more informed decision. So can trimming quoted text to just the
relevant portions: if I see a couple or three screenfuls of quoting,
or can't tell whether I'm seeing quoted or original text, I begin to
wonder whether it's worth looking further for something new. Same if
I can't find the text for all the markup tags.

-Frank McConnell
Received on Sat Jun 17 2000 - 14:03:26 BST