Q: What is top-posting?
A: Top-posting is the practice of replying to an email and placing your text at the top of the reply, before all other text.
Q: Why is top-posting evil?
A1: Because top-posters tend to leave the entirety of the email to which they are replying intact, so the email gets too long.
A2: Because we prefer to use bottom-posting, and it is *extremely* hard to maintain a coherently flowing email conversation when some of the participants are bottom-posting and some are top-posting.
A3: backwards read don't humans because
A4: email messages are read more often than written, so it is considerate and efficient for the sender to craft an effective message rather than burden the receiver with comprehending a poorly constructed one.
Q: Why should I stop top-posting?
A1: Because then people are more likly to reply to your email
A2: Because top-posting makes you look clueless (sorry).
A3: So folks like this guy don't feel the urge to hunt you down and murder you in your sleep.
Q: How do I bottom-post?
A: Edit your interlocutor's email down to just the relevant parts to which you are replying and then place your reply beneath that.
Added bonus! You can intersperse your replies in between your interlocutor's text, enabling readers to more easily see the connection etween your words and his.
Q: Is it ever OK to top-post?
A: Rarely. Sometimes it makes sense if you are forwarding the entirety of an email to additional parties and you expect that those parties will be responding in the normal bottom-posting manner.
URL: http://ck.wikia.com/