On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Kenneth Gorelick wrote: @> > I have kept out of this discussion since I am not any kind of computer @> > professional, although I use email extensively in my business. In the @> > few email lists in which I participate, everyone puts new comments @> > above old ones. I presume that this is what you mean by "top posting". @> > It is also virtually universal in my business emails. @> @> My email software automatically places new comments above old ones, so @> I guess I assumed (I know, it makes an ass of u and me) that the @> computer pros who wrote it that way had a reason. Every time you say something like this, a little sparrow dies. I wouldn't trust a programmer to pick out my shoes. And I am one. It may help to turn off the "quote messages while replying option" and simply copy-and-paste stuff in with a ctrl-click (since I believe there's an option on the context menu that says "paste as quotation"). Or you could switch mail programs - the Mozilla mail component works decently and has many more configuration options than Mail does. Another option is to just whip out terminal and install pine, like I did. Hee hee. @> However, as a good list citizen, if there is a standard that everyone @> agrees to I will do my best to comply. Basically, which way you do it depends on how steeped you are in net culture. As culture-saturation increases, the likelihood that you will quote before posting increases. In personal e-mail, it's generally less important than it is on newsgroups and lists - top-posting makes it harder for new readers to get into the conversation, since they are given the least comprehensible message first, and the data they need to understand it is buried several screens down. Imagine the movie Memento if this helps. Also, thanks for making the effort.