How to get rid of those forwarding carrots>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

[Carrol Cox]

One set of <s is usually quite acceptable, and I agree that without them
I often don't know who is saying what. But when they grow to > > and to
> > > -- AND the formatting gets more and more uneven; AND larger and larger proportions of the original(s) are more or less irrelevant to the added comments; AND when in fact the added comments become more or less lost in the forrest of uneven lines, pale italics, endless quotes within quotes within quotes, then it becomes hopeless, and I for one merely delete such posts. If for some reason I think that the post in question is of importance, then I fwd it to myself, and edit it for legibility.

There is NO excuse for those >s in a _forwarded post_ (except for those
that were in the original). With Netscape, regardless of original
settings, if you right click on the fwd button it will give you three
choices: Inline, quoted, as attachment. The second and third choices
are, I believe, crimesd against humanity. The second puts those damn
carrots in when they are utterly irrelevant. The third produces a post
that I delete very quickly (and immediately empty my trash so I won't
second guess myself) -- one experience with a virus is enough for a
lifetime. I don't remember how now, but you can also set options so that
the inline is the default.

I assume most mailing programs offer the same features as netscape.

Incidentally, I'm retired, and spend more of my time reading e-mail than
is good for my mental health, and I can't read even half the posts that
come through. I continue to be amazed at evidence that many people on
the lists seem to read most of the posts on a list. And do people really
read the long newspaper articles that are posted. My procedure with them
is to decide on the first screen or so whether the article is worth
keeping on disk for possible future reference or should I delete it at
once. With rare exceptions, reading it on the spot is not an option. I
suggested in a post to pen-l that people who post long articles should
precede them with a short two or three sentence statement of the core.

Carrol

Catherine Driscoll wrote:
> 
> what's more i like them
> they're historiography, art, and debate
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com>
> Date: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 4:26 am
> Subject: Re: How to get rid of those forwarding
> carrots>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> 
> > Sometimes the '>' is the only way to figure out who said what ...
> >