Usenet formatting compliance request (line length)
From
Lawyer Daggett@21:1/5 to
All on Fri Jul 28 13:56:03 2023
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Greetings. I don't want to play cloakroom monitor but ...
I like reading some of your contributions, and I like having them remain readable and coherent when quoted in follow-ups.
As all know, the convention is to indent prior posts with '>', one per
nesting level. But usenet was designed to work off simple formatting
without line wrapping. Newsreaders and posting software are not
consistent in how they treat long lines of text without line breaks.
Some posting software tries to 'fix' things but that goes beyond the
formal specifications for usenet. Google is completely non-conforming.
Our Moderator, David, has on occasion admonished some to follow
the convention and have posts limit their line length to under 70
characters. It really helps if you do. Almost all the software people
use will behave well if you do.
Further, if for some reason, you interrupt a quoted line to interject,
please, spend that small extra effort to insert the proper number
of '>' indents in front of the line you interrupted. It makes things so
much more readable. It is especially important when the quoting
gets nested 2 or more layers deep. (I forego my personal opinion
about promiscuous interruptions for the moment)
If you value the words you write, and want to be understood, please
put in this small added effort. You might even consider if it's worth
cleaning up some of the posts you respond to if they have ignored
these protocols.
Improved clarity of communication is a good and virtuous thing.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)