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Top posting vs replying inline feels like an incomplete dichotomy. I often encounter threads on mailing lists where people are replying inline but not trimming the part they're not replying to. That makes it hard to follow. Or they reply inline and trim well but it's still hard to follow because you need more context than just the part they're replying to.

So the key is "the thread needs to be distilled" as OP puts it. And often that's more work than just finding the right sentence to quote.

My approach these days in my email is:

99% of the time I quote nothing and delete everything my client puts into the compose window, relying on the default thread-view in most email clients to supply the context for my readers.

1% of the time I need to quote, and I quote liberally, treating words as a wiki, and editing/sculpting the text in '> ' just as much as my own reply below it.



Yeah this is my strategy. The top/bottom post brigade are both happy and email clients seem to handle it well.

It's kind of alarming to me that the default in say gmail is to constantly re-send the original message chain back and forth. I guess it then gives the whole chain to newcomers to the thread?


Yeah and it prevents issues if the subject line changes in an unexpected way that confuses the email client, or issues where an email chain goes on for a long period of time but retention policies delete old emails. Etc…


I agree.

> Top posting vs replying inline feels like an incomplete dichotomy.

There are just so many options.




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