How to reply to an e-mail message: a kindness

When replying to an e-mail message, it is a common practice to insert your comments after the quoted material to which a comment pertains.  It might look something like this (depending upon the mail client being used)

| This would be a received comment, as quoted into
| a _reply_.  It might be only a few lines long, or it
| could contain multiple paragraphs.  Some mailers
| use a "> " at the left margin.  The recipient of
| your mail does not know which your mailer is
| showing to you.

And _this_ material would be a replied comment,
inserted after the material to which it pertains; it
will not be "marked" in any way.

However:

Inserting comments is not always appropriate, and on small screens it might seem somewhat inconvenient.  In the event that quoting material back to the originator is not needed for clarity, it is a kindness to remove it before hitting <send>--especially if pictures are involved.  Image files are quite large, and when they are replied back to the sender, they then reside on his hard drive twice.

Recipients whose hard drives are nearly full will thank you.


Update 24 March--one more thing:  Many/most/all of our mobiles (celephones, etc.) append "Sent from my iPhone" or etc. to outgoing mails.  You never see it, but we do.

It can be disabled more or less immediately after your acquisition of the device; see its Preferences for the setting that can turn it off.

Thanks.


Mark_
25 January 2017
Day 6 of the new Dark Ages: _"Idiocracy" Live_.