On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 11:40 AM, Ron Johnson
<ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
On 2009-03-22 11:45, Chris Bannister wrote:
Bottom posting of course is just as bad or worse than top posting.
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
This isn't true. Come enter the 21st Century, it started nearly a decade ago. ;-) Top posting works well in a modern threaded mail reader (all of which, incidentally, support HTML email). Because *you* are a curmudgeon doesn't mean everyone else has to be. ;-)
Your example looks like this in a threaded mail reader:
Mail 1: Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Mail 2: A: Top-posting.
Mail 3: Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
Mail 4: A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
It looks no different than a discussion forum or other normal conversation. In fact, reading bottom-posted threads in a *modern mail reader* is annoying as it forces the reader to display a bunch of extraneous unnecessary text (the quoted material). I just read it in the previous post, I don't need to see it again.
I bottom-post out of force of habit, however, it's archaic and generally unnecessary.