rantlet, and a question for y'all

[jennlk]

I just got an email from somebody (with a yahoo.com address) who said that she had a hard time finding my responses, and that I should "highlight my responses or put them in a different color". WTF? She very helpfully enclosed an example, which I couldn't see because I don't have HTML enabled in my mailreader -- when I looked at it in Gmail I could see the colors. (I had interleaved paragraphs, with a ">" at the beginning of each quoted line and extra lines between paragraphs, something that I've been doing for well over a decade. While not as obvious as changing colors or font, I would think that this is sufficient indication. Then again, I have been doing email for quite a while.)

How do I politely say "it's not my fault you're using a mailreader that doesn't understand standard email protocol"? Or has standard email protocol changed that much? Is there even one any more? Am I an email dodo, doomed to irrelevance because I don't use a web-based email reader?

Comments

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Most modern mail programs/web mail don't work well with interleaving responses and it can be very difficult to tell who wrote what. And whether we old school emailers like it our not, top-posting is the de facto email standard these days. Many people won't even look for interleaved responses because they don't realize they can exist.

[jennlk]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. So, I guess my next question is 'how *do* I make my responses clear without top posting?' Because my old-school mail reader defaults to bottom posted replies, and it's at least as much work for me to change to top posting as it is for her to change to bottom posting.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

No easy answer to that, because my experience is that what works on one platform might not work on another, so a message that's clear online might not be on a smartphone, for instance.

I would suggest fully bottom posting rather than interleaving. Or responding as if you are interleaving underneath her top post and then delete the rest of the quoted text.