Quoted Text Snipped

If you're subscribed to a mailing list hosted by The Hug you may sometimes see a text appended to the bottom of an email posted to the list. It will look something like this:

[quoted text snipped - see http://the-hug.org/quoting.html]

What this means is that the mail as originally received by The Hug was "top posted" - that is to say that the posted email was a comment to a previous mail and included the complete text of the previous mail below the comment preceded by "__ Reply Separator __" or "-- Original Message --" or similar text.

On mailing lists at The Hug we discourage this practise, preferring you to quote in Usenet style. The quoted text should be set off from your replying text by a quoting character - usually a greater-than sign >. Quoted text is useful since it provides a context for the reply, without the reader having to find the original email. Done properly, quoting can make it easier to follow a complex thread of emails. Done improperly, quoting can be confusing to readers, and may even be insulting to other posters (for example, by accidentally attributing a quoted statement made by one poster to another). Here are some of the things to bear in mind when quoting:

• Always put your reply text after the text you are quoting. Remember that the purpose of quoted text is to provide a context for your reply - if your reply comes first, forcing the reader to look further down the message for what you are replying to, the purpose of quoting (to make things easier for the reader) has been defeated.
• Trim the quoted text so that there is sufficient context for your reply, but not masses of extraneous text that do not have anything to do with what you want to say.
• Never quote signatures.
• It is generally a good idea to use a standard > character for quoting as some mail software can then automatically highlight quoted text.
• Include a proper attribution line before a quote. An attribution line looks something like this:

      On Mon, January 17, 2004 at 19:13, Fred said:
  

• If you are quoting a message that itself contains quotes, do not remove the quoting characters or attribution lines from the sections that you are quoting.

Outlook Express, a mail client commonly used, makes this difficult. You can make it easier by downloading some software to upgrade it such as Outlook-QuoteFix (their web page also explains more about correct quoting, with an example).