
Why I Am Switching to Interleaved Email Replies and Why You Should Too - showngo
http://brooksreview.net/2011/01/interleaved-email/
======
ghshephard
Bottom/Top posting is like deciding which side of the road to drive on - it's
more important to do what everyone else does, rather than follow a "correct"
system.

Every Silicon Valley corporation I've ever worked for has followed a top-
posting model, ergo, I top post when communicating with them.

On the flip side, Open Source mailing lists like LKML bottom post, so I bottom
post when communicating with those communities.

At the end of the day, after 10 years of daily use, I've never really noticed
much of a difference between the two systems - as long as everyone uses the
same approach consistently within the community, it's pretty straightforward
to follow the thread.

~~~
dhimes
Clients should be able to allow you to switch between top and bottom posting
at will.

~~~
Sapient
Wave solved this problem really well. I wish it had worked out.

------
jedberg
I've been using inerleaved responses for 20 years. It's the only right way.

The only time I top post is

1) If the reply is not a direct answer to a question, but instead a more
general statement

2) If the email had a single question.

Why do I top post for #2? Because most mail readers these days give a preview.
A short answer at the top will show up in the preview, so the recipient
doesn't have to open the email. This is especially useful on today's mobile
devices with small screens.

I never bottom post, because scrolling all the way down is annoying.

* I also top post when dealing with non-technical "old-timers" because they seem to get confused with the interleaved responses.

~~~
ScottBurson
I've been doing it longer than that, but I don't quite agree that "it's the
only right way". I top-post maybe half the time now, depending on the kind of
reply (as you note) but also my audience's expectations. For example, when
replying to a developer list for an open-source project, I'll usually use
interleaving because it's the style in that community. In business contexts
I'm more likely to top-post because that's what everyone else does (and as
another poster noted, Outlook is broken).

I guess we don't disagree too much; I'm just saying I don't try to force
interleaving where it's not likely to be appreciated.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah, when I said "it's the only right way", that was kind of a joke. Should
of had a smiley there.

I think we pretty much agree -- I tend to lean towards interleaved, but will
top post when it is expected.

------
lmkg
Interleaving only works if the email you're replying to consists of separable
units that can be replied to individually. Replying to messages with
complexity beyond "A/S/L??", I find that replies tend to depend on each other
and if you try to quote, or selectively quote, parts of a message and reply to
each section, your reply ends up having forward and backward dependencies,
splitting up important points between different block quotes, and repeating
itself. This is especially true when you have to introduce new information the
other person wasn't aware, or if you need to explain your reasoning, or depart
from their expected answer format. In short, any time your reply contains
anything additional beyond direct answers to the questions. In the real world,
most answers entail such additional information.

I know we value each and every precious keystroke, but I tend to stick with
that old adage we learned in middle-school of restating the question in your
answer. Since you're re-establishing the email context in your own words
rather than using the words & order the other person gave you, you have the
freedom to structure your reply that best communicates whatever it is you need
to add.

My experience is that interleaved replied are also less concise. Re-stating
context allows you to summarize it, and it allows you to unify several points
into one response. Interleaved replies encourage repetition--I can't tell you
how many debates I've seen with point-by-point rebuttals, where the last N-1
chunks all start with "Again," "As I said before," and "Like I just said."

To use the example from the original article: Best reply would be "Thursday
sounds great!" Much shorter, and I don't have to re-read what I already wrote
to understand it.

~~~
rflrob
As lots of the other comments suggest, I think a highly context dependent
approach is probably best. If the email is a response within a group of
people, I'll assume that everyone has read the prior email or two (or has
access to it in their mail reader). In that case, if my message is a single
response to the entire content of the message, then I'll top-post, so within
their email reader, they can read only the relevant new bits (my message),
then go back to the quoted text below for context if they've forgotten.

On the other hand, if there are specific points that I want to address, I will
happily interleave my text, to make it especially clear what I'm responding
to. As in everything, look at the context, and see what makes the most sense.

In regards to the "sounds great!" response, the OP was just a poor answer to
the question, regardless of whether it was above or below. It would be like if
I asked you whether you wanted coffee or tea, and you just said "Yes". While
technically true in a Boolean sense, it doesn't help me decide which one to
pour.

------
hapless
Some versions Microsoft Outlook incorrectly quote bottom-posted e-mails,
causing your reply to be lost in the line noise -- it's greyed out, like the
quoted text above it. This bug caused me no end of problems until I found out
about it, in 2009.

I had repeated customer complaints about "Blank e-mails" or missed content in
my inline replies.

Until the very last Outlook user disappears, I can't risk bottom-posting in
business correspondence. You can thank Microsoft for destroying the legibility
of e-mail threads.

~~~
LiveTheDream
I always top-post "comments inline below" to avert this problem. Works great.

~~~
5teev
It probably doesn't matter either way, as it doesn't seem like people do more
than skim emails. They won't scroll down to read interleaved replies--
Outlook/Entourage's text-formatting doesn't help--nor will they even scroll
down if your top-post goes past the default view.

If you can't say it all in three short paragraphs, you either have to spread
it out over a few more focused emails, spoon-feed over IM, or--horror of
horrors--meet in person!

------
runjake
I think people waste too much time and energy on this debate.

I use & encourage my correspondents to use short, informative subjects --
mostly via leading by example. This way, I can attach some vague context to
it.

When I reply to a message, I put my response at the very top of the message.
This allows my recipient to receive my message, scan the useful subject line
to gain context. He then selects the message and instantly sees my latest
response.

He doesn't potentially have to scroll through pages and pages of responses,
signatures, taglines, client-mangled quote levels, and compliance footer
paragraphs.

It wastes time and it makes no sense. I don't need to read top to bottom
because I only want to see the latest bits, and those are ready at the top of
the message.

------
dilap
Aren't blogs just one giant top-post after another? I think most-recent-at-
the-top is actually quite natural for unbounded conversations, where the most-
recent posts are likely to be the most relevant, and you almost certainly
don't care to read the entire history. Email fits this pretty well.

(As an aside, I think the Q/A nature of the example given is unfair, since Q/A
conventionally goes top-down. Compare to this, which seems quite natural

    
    
      28
      > How old are you?
    

It's even more natural and obvious to go bottom-up when multiple layers of
quoting are present:

    
    
      28
      > How old are you?
      >> I'll answer exactly one personal question.)
    

As for the interleaved style, it's somewhat a matter of taste, but I find it
often creates nitpicky, disjointed conversations; responding in paragraphs
rather than lines encourages more cohesive, literarily satisfying exchanges.

~~~
jonhendry
I don't find those examples natural at all.

~~~
dilap
Well, fair enough. I find it natural, your mileage may vary. :)

Do you also find the top-posting style of blogs, twitter, &c awkward? I really
do think there is something to be said for putting the newest information
first.

~~~
jonhendry
I don't mind blogs, because posts tend to largely stand alone. They're like
consecutive articles in a magazine. It can be a little annoying in the case
where, say, a post is tagged, and I click on the tag to get all related posts,
and they cover multiple pages and I need to walk to the last page to get the
first post. That can be a little annoying.

Twitter is a little annoying for me, when there's a discussion going on, where
it's difficult to get the context of each twitter message. If the tweets stand
alone, as is often the case, I don't really care.

Back in the Usenet days, I was a scrupulous interleaved-response writer. Quote
the specific sentences or phrases being responded to, followed by my response.
I prefer to have that bit of context, right by the response, in that order
(quote then response).

~~~
brianpan
Exactly, I used to interleave...but the times are a changin and there's not
much we can do about it. Twitter, FB, blogs are not going to change (nor
should they). OP is about 16 years too late to this argument.

------
bcl
He just now realized this? Top posting has been frowned on for YEARS. Even
back in the BBS/FidoNet days you top posted at your own peril.

The classic description of top posting says it best -
<http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/top-post.html>

And while you're at it, don't forget to [snip] out the parts that aren't
relevant.

~~~
mkelly
Enforcement of the preference for inline replies has (as I understand it)
waned greatly in recent years. As I understand it, people who began conversing
over email seriously in the late 1990s or early 2000s are much less likely to
have learned about this than old-timers.

(I say this as someone who started in the late 90s and later converted to
inline replies when I realized their benefit several years later. Many people
my own age -- even technical ones -- think my inline replies are abnormal.)

------
drm237
People tend to use examples that make their methods really shine. The example
conversations in this post work out really well, but they're more like an IM
conversation than most email treads I've had. Try a few examples where someone
writes a couple of paragraphs and your bottom reply is below the fold. Most
people will think you didn't reply, not that they have to scroll to find it.

This is less of a problem with email and more an issue with how email clients
display threaded conversations. Does anyone that uses Gmail think this is a
problem?

~~~
arantius
> Try a few examples where someone writes a couple of paragraphs and your
> bottom reply is below the fold. Most people will think you didn't reply, not
> that they have to scroll to find it.

Then you're quoting incorrectly. (Notice how I quoted only a section of your
original, in my reply here.) Proper correspondence includes trimming the
quoted section. Not simply leaving the whole thing there.

------
eli
Didn't we lose the Top Posting debate 20 years ago?

~~~
gwern
Yes, but it's still heartening to see people re-discover it.

It helps confirm that we were right all along, it's still someone doing email
better and possibly convincing other people to be better, and it may make
people think: 'the geeks were right about interleaved bottom-posting (I now
realize after using email enough to compare to their experience), what else
were they right about? Standards? FLOSS? Backups?'

------
wccrawford
Too much scanning. Put your reply at the top where I can find it easily and
not go hunting for pieces of it all over the places, like the shoes after the
dog got ahold of them.

~~~
pjscott
Your email client doesn't use obviously distinct visual styles for quoted
stuff? When someone writes in interleaved style, I just look at the message-
bits, and look at the quoted parts for context. It's easy.

~~~
quanticle
Regarding that, I hate it when people mix various quoting styles. It causes
the quoting system to render text incorrectly.

------
quanticle
The problem with interleaved posting is that it becomes very confusing once
you get beyond two or three replies. Especially when you have multiple people,
it becomes difficult to track the nesting level of the current line so that
one can determine who is "speaking" at the moment.

~~~
pjscott
On phpBB bulletin boards, the usual custom seems to be to quote the person
you're replying to, and _maybe_ the person they quoted, if absolutely
necessary. The reply depth should never go high enough to cause problems. This
works well.

~~~
quanticle
That's fine for bulletin boards, where all you have to do is scroll up to read
the rest of the history. However, until very recently (i.e. GMail) viewing the
history behind a particular e-mail message required you to go back through all
your e-mail and find the previous messages in the thread. On a busy list, this
could be quite a bit of trouble. Hence, having the entire history in the
message itself could be quite useful.

------
roc
My current preferred style of reply is to write replies as self-contained
unambiguous answers [1]. It takes maybe a couple seconds of additional thought
and typing and the result is far more readable than interleaved.

Speaking of which: as a reformed pedant I have to say that interleaved is a
style that only a pedant could love. Most emails simply do not contain
questions that demand such precise replies, let alone multiple such questions.

And certainly no-one other than a fellow pedant will ever, ever appreciate an
interleaved response. The tone implicit in its structure is somewhere between
nitpicky and borderline-argumentative. Even if you stubbornly insist on
absolute precision in your replies, do be aware of what the format is saying.

[1] For the "lunch" example in the article, the reply would look something
like "I haven't talked to Steve since he left town. Breadsticks sound awesome
for Thursday!" with no quote of the original email at all, because the answers
are perfectly clear on their own.

The cases where Tyler has forgotten what he asked me, or how, are edge cases
far more appropriately resolved by threaded email clients and search. There's
simply no call to carry detritus into every conversation when the only upside
is saving the recipient a two-second search in a tiny minority of cases.

------
mentat
I may be taking an "old school" approach to this, but I top post. That top
post is an actual coherent written document that answers the questions with
enough context to make it clear that it's answering questions. If you treat
email like chat, then yes, top posting is dumb. However, email can also be an
extension of the "letter writing" style of interaction where you don't just
answer with one word. I'm not sure that I think it's a good idea for email to
evolve into "slow chat".

~~~
alextingle
You are not old school. In fact top-posting is sign that you are a relative
newbie.

Long ago there was USENET, and everyone knew how to properly format their
posts, and by extension, e-mails. Windows didn't even have a network stack,
back then.

~~~
mentat
You might want to check your assumptions and read my post. The subject of my
entire post was what literary form was appropriate to what medium. I've been
using BBSes and the subsequent networks since 300 baud modems. Perhaps I was
influenced by a more literate line of programmers and writers but calling me a
newbie is ridiculous.

------
rue
Honestly, at this point I'd be happy if I didn't have to suffer people using
@somename on mailing lists.

------
antirez
In general most people with an email don't know how to write an email, what is
the right balance between top posting (sometimes it is faster both to write
and read), and when instead an interleaved reply is needed.

And when the latter is needed, what is the right amount of email to take, what
to remove, where to put a [snip], and so forth. I at this point think this is
something that just programmers and other power users can get right.

I'm completely pessimist in the ability of the random internet aware guy to be
able to reply well to emails...

------
tzs
Once top vs. bottom posting is sorted out, then comes the question of plain
text vs. rich text/HTML email. I used to be firmly in the plain text camp,
until I realized that was dumb, via a thought experiment.

Imagine a world where we have computers, networks, word processors, the web,
and so on, but someone it didn't occur to anyone to come up with email. So, we
are still using the postal service for our mail needs. We use computers to
compose our mail--but then we print out the document, stuff it in an envelope,
attach stamps, and mail it. Finally, it occurs to someone to invent email.

Are they going to invent it as a plain text system? Of course not. They are
going to try to make it be as capable as postal mail. Since people sending
postal mail send documents that use rich formatting, and have embedded
graphics, and have attachments, and so on, email will have those capabilities,
too.

Now back to our world. In our world email was invented at a time when we
simply did not have the technology to reasonably support those things. It was
plain text due to technology limits, not because plain text was better.

Well, those technology limits are gone.

------
msg
I don't find interleaving natural. It would be natural if we were using old
school hypertext and reading from anchor in the original text to response in
the new text. But as it is, I have to skim a whole email again to find the
small portion that changed. If the reply is terse enough, I have to reread the
large original to get enough context to understand what they are saying.

If the large portion is snipped, you can't read the whole thread in the final
message(s, for forked threads), but have to go spelunking through multiple
messages.

Also, on some mail readers it is hard to tell the difference between responses
and text indented for visibility, like quoting or code or equations. Replies
to replies get really messy.

I also don't like scrolling.

I got used to reverse chronological reading with blogs (the train has almost
sailed on them, huh).

What top posting forces you to do is to form one coherent complete thought (if
you plan to be understood).

------
daniel02216
The correct answer is to use a client that does threaded conversations and
hidden quotes properly, like Gmail, and then not care about top or bottom
posting at all. Seems like an argument only for old fogies who used email in
the dark ages.

(Disclaimer: I only started using email for real stuff when Gmail came out.)

------
rradu
Good in theory, confusing in practice, especially when the font face and color
are the same as the original text.

Also, most people are used to top-posting, and coming across the rare inter-
leafing response leads to initial confusion.

~~~
jdludlow
Font faces and color in email can join top-posting in the bin of terrible
ideas.

~~~
pjscott
What better way to express your personality than by sending all emails in
20-point pink Comic Sans MS, with no paragraph breaks at all?

I've seen several people do this. No exaggeration.

------
jim_h
In an ideal world, people would read the entire email and give a short and
concise answer to each question. The answer should also have enough clues to
reference the question.

It would be 'Sure, Lunch at 1pm on Thursday' instead of 'Sure, Thursday 1pm'.

However, most of the time it doesn't work that way. Some forget questions,
give short and vague answers, or just don't reply. Also depending on the email
client, the email text doesn't show formatting and the each line is prefixed
with > or other characters making it a hassle to pull out text you want and
format it just to do squeeze the answer in between.

------
civilian
Gmail already does this... welcome to 2005.

~~~
torme
I'm confused, doesn't Gmail do top posting?

~~~
TimMontague
Yes, Gmail does top posting, but the threaded display that Gmail uses shows
each message in chronological order from the top down.

------
yason
People have been battling over top-posting and interleaved quoting for fifteen
years, about the time Microsoft introduced their HTML email client that
couldn't handle proper quoting without messing up the whole message, and
subsequently introducing email to people who couldn't handle even trying to
quote properly.

This is nothing new. Anyone who's used to BBS's, usenet, or any pre-Microsoft
email will probably assume that interleaved quoting is the only way to
properly reply to a message.

------
billmcneale
This article only shows examples that supports its points. Most of the long
email discussions happen over a period of a few hours and you don't need much
context to know what is being discussed. For these kinds of emails (which are
the majority of the messages I read every day), interleaved replying is a
nuisance since you find yourself having to skip over the same content over and
over again.

This is why top posting won this battle a long time ago (when hotmail
appeared, pretty much).

------
purp
I interleaved for decades, then switched for anything that's not a point-by-
point reply. And it's all GMail's fault. You see, top replies are now
snippeted in my GMail and on my phone.

I can process email faster that way, as can most folks I converse with.

------
motters
I remember getting into a big argument about top/bottom posting in 1996. I was
in favour of having replies underneath the original text, and I still am,
because it makes everything easier to read.

------
southpolesteve
Yikes. That article was entirely too long for a topic that is mostly a matter
of personal preference.

99% of the email I get works fine for top-posting replies.

------
hkuo
Interweaving works great as long as a note is included at the top to look
below for the replies or comments.

------
sigzero
I really hate that format of replies. So, no, I will not be switching to that
format.

------
LiveTheDream
I think people on HN actually do a great job of interleaving in comments and
replies.

------
jcfrei
If I'm not mistaken this is the default setting in thunderbird.

------
regularfry
Is the styling broken for anyone else in Chrome?

