The message
from June Hughes contains these words:
In message , Jaques
d'Alltrades writes
The message
from Dave contains these words:

IME top posting is the convention for business where time and getting
the reply is most important and you are most likely to be familiar both
with the subject and the poster. Bottom posting for ngs where you really
need to know the context (out of many many possible threads and ngs) in
order to understand the reply

However, judicious use of the secateurs would be appreciated.

Well, yes. We have had many long, long posts recently. However,
over-snipping is surely as bad as not snipping at all. IIRC, some 10
years ago we were all advised to keep a post to one screen so that
no-one had to scroll down.

Some newsreaders wouldn't send a reply if the reply was more than a
certain proportion of the quoted text.

It soon became obvious that this was A Bad Idea, and it was left up to
the judgement and/or industry of the poster to trim as required.

Quoting nothing invites a post to be ignored because it's usually
difficult to guess the context, and overquoting - leaving a
sodding-great chunk and adding a line or two is just lazy.

--
Rusty
Open the creaking gate to make a horrid.squeak, then lower the foobar.
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/