Top Posting....

[barophobia]

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:19:46 -0500, Phil Labonte <plabonte at gmail.com> wrote:
> I still fail to understand how top posting "interferes with the flow",
> if you read the original post why do you have to include it in your
> replies?

Those are two separate issues. "Top posting" is when someone puts
their reply above the information in the email they are replying to.
"include it in your replies" is relating to trimming. Trimming is when
all unnecessary text from a previous email is removed from your reply.

But to get to what I *think* you mean... top posting interferes with
the flow for the simple reason that English is read left to right, TOP
to BOTTOM. The oldest text on a page in a book is at the very top left
of the page. The newest text on a page is at the bottom right.

How does it make sense that in an email thread the newest information
goes on top? Imagine reading a book where, although individual
paragraphs flowed from the left to right and top to bottom, the
paragraphs were in reverse order?

Except for Jeopardy (an American gameshow) when is it a good idea to
read the answer before the question?


Chris.