Mailing netiquette

[James Wilkinson]

Ian Fogarty wrote:
> Please excuse me if the answer is wrong or my formatting is incorrect -
> this is the first time of replying to a post so I am trying my best!!

Thanks for taking part in the list.

But there are four things of which you might want to take note:

1. *PLEASE* don't quote an entire message digest when you reply to it.
It takes up loads of space, and is nearly all irrelevant.

Good e-mail practice is simply to cut down the text you quote to the
stuff you're responding to, like I've done here.

2. It's generally preferred if you put the text you're replying to
first, and the response underneath, like I'm doing here. That means that
people can follow the conversation much more easily: the order of the
e-mail follows the order of the conversation.

3. When doing this, it's easier if you use a standard quote character,
like I did for you. In Outlook, you can do this through Tools menu ->
Options -> Preferences tab -> E-mail Options, and then "When replying to
a message": "Prefix each line of the original message". "Prefix each
line with" "> " is traditional.

4. If you follow the link at the bottom of each e-mail, there's an
option to "Get MIME or Plain Text Digests?" MIME digests have each
e-mail as an attachment to the digest. It makes replying to them much
easier (you get the subject automatically right, and it means that those
of us with threading e-mail clients can see the threads properly).

Welcome to the list, and I hope you enjoy your time here.

James.

-- 
E-mail address: james | You can tell when you're working with "Enterprise
@westexe.demon.co.uk  | Software Solutions" because the vendor freebies are
                      | red t-shirts.
                      |     -- Anthony de Boer