Posting Style - Quoting Previous Messages

Quoting Previous Messages

In an e-mail reply, it is sometimes appropriate to include a full or partial copy of the original message that is being replied to. As opposed to in-person conversations and Internet chats, email responses may be received long after the original message was sent, so the original sender may have forgotten, misplaced or deleted the original. Many email reading programs (mail user agents) encourage this behavior by automatically including a copy of the original message in the reply editing window.

Quoted text from previous messages is usually distinguished in some way from the new (reply) text. At a minimum, the two parts are given different indentation. In the example below, the first line is the original message, the second line is the reply:

The project meeting will be at 14:00. --Mary
Mary, I cannot attend: my plane leaves at 15:30 --Joe.

Alternatively, special delimiter lines may be used:

Hey Joe, Paris is in France, not England. --Mary
--- original message --- You just had a call from England, from Paris I think. --Joe --- end of original message ---

For extra clarity, blank lines may also be inserted between the two parts. When using an email medium that supports text markup (such as HTML or RTF), the previous text may be indicated by a distinctive font and/or color:

The meeting has been postponed to next Friday. --Mary
Has the deadline for the report been moved too? --Joe