I'm with Ray. If you are looking at a long post with several facets and it
contains one thing to which you wish to reply, then fine, reference just
that section of the post and delete the rest. Lately it has become very
unwieldy around here.

So:

"Where do I cut the spike on my Phal?

Cut it at the third node from the bottom and pray."

That should be okay, but sometimes I, like some other responders in this
thread, can't find (or just give up trying) the latest response.

For personal emails, where I can change fonts to make things clearer, I will
sometimes respond in pieces to several items in the original. For example, a
couple of years ago I was doing some long distance counseling a
complicated relationship. There were multiple subjects within each email,
and they were all important. In order not to blur the advice, I addressed
each point separately, referencing each one. But here, there's no reason to
keep all the "X wrote", "Y wrote", etc.

Joe, I don't know about Google groups, but in Outlook Express I can cut,
paste, delete and insert to my heart's content.

Diana