Editing Posting style (section)

==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; due to the [[Asynchronous communication|asynchronous]] nature of Internet communication, people often engage in many conversations at the same time, and email responses may be received long after the original message was sent. For these reasons, the original poster may not be aware of what message a post is intended to be a response to, and providing context is helpful. Many email reading programs ([[mail user agent]]s) encourage this behaviour 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. Often, the two parts are given different [[Indentation (typesetting)|indentation]]. In the example below, the first paragraph is the original message, the second is the reply:

     Hi Jim, could you confirm what time our meeting is tomorrow?
     -- Mary
 
 It's at three o'clock.
 -- Jim

Alternatively, special delimiter lines may be used:

 Yes Joe, I'll get onto that. --Mary
 
 --- original message ---
 Could you send a copy of the report to our Paris office? --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:

     <span style="color:darkgreen">The meeting has been postponed to next Friday. --Mary</span>
 
 Has the deadline for the report been moved too? --Joe

===Quoted line prefix===
[[Image:MsOutlook-EmailOptions.png|thumb|right|Alternative e-mail quoting styles supported by Microsoft Outlook]]

A common convention in plain-text email is to prefix each line of the quoted text with a distinctive character or string.  As of 2020 (and for many years previously), the [[greater-than sign]] ("<code>&gt;</code>", the [[wikt:canon|canonical]] prefix)<ref name="rfc3676#section-4.5">R. Gellens (February 2004), '''RFC 3676''' [[rfc:3676#section-4.5|''The Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters'']]</ref> is almost universally used; but other characters such as the [[ASCII]] [[vertical bar]] character ("<code>|</code>") have been used as well, sometimes with one or more spaces inserted before or after the quoted text marker.

There is no standard declaring one quote-prefix to be "right" and others to be "wrong", but some standards depend on conventional quoting. The "never issued" and obsolete [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1849.html "son-of-1036"] draft RFC 1849 recommends "<code>&gt;</code>" as the quote-prefix; [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3676.txt RFC 3676] depends on it and considers "<code>&gt;&gt;&nbsp;</code>" and "<code>&gt;&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;</code>" to be semantically different. That is, "<code>&gt;&gt;&nbsp;</code>" has a quote-depth of two, while "<code>&gt;&nbsp;&gt;&nbsp;</code>" has a quote-depth of one, quoting a line starting with "&gt;". Most e-mail clients treat the two sequences as equivalent, however.

The convention of quoting was common in [[Usenet]] newsgroups by 1990, and is supported by many popular  [[User agent|email interfaces]], either by default or as a user-settable option. In [[Microsoft Outlook]], for instance, this behavior is controlled by an option labeled "Prefix each line of the original".  Besides inserting markers automatically in quoted lines, some interfaces assume that a line starting with a "<code>&gt;</code>" character or similar is quoted text, and will automatically display it in a distinctive font or color:

 <span style="color:red">> How is the report coming? --Mary</span>
 It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe

Sometimes the insertion of a quoted line marker will cause one original line to be folded as two lines in the reply, and the continuation line may not have the proper marker. To avoid ambiguity in such cases, one may consider inserting blank lines after each block of quoted text:

 <span style="color:red">>The board is asking again for the sales data. We really must provide</span>
 <span style="color:red">> them with some figures. How is the report coming? --Mary</span>
 
 It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe

Quoted line markers are most commonly used in plain-text messages. In HTML messages, other devices may be used to indicate quoted text, such as [[HTML element|HTML indentation element]]s like <code>[[Blockquote element|blockquote]]</code> or <code>dl</code>.

===Reply level indication===
A message often includes text from two or more messages exchanged in previous rounds of a long discussion. If an additional quotation marker is inserted at every round, without removing any existing markers, the number of markers at the beginning of each line will show the "level" of the reply, that is, how many rounds have occurred since that line was written. These accumulated markers are usually sufficient to distinguish the parts that came from each message.  Some email interfaces recognize this convention and automatically render each level in a different color. For example:

 <span style="color:red">>>> How is the report coming? --Mary
 </span><span style="color:blue">>>
 >> It will be on your desk by noon. --Joe
 </span><span style="color:magenta">>
 > Sorry Joe, I need it by 11:00 at the latest. --Mary</span>
 
 OK, but it will be missing this month's figures. --Joe

If the discussion is between two parties only, then an even number of markers (including zero) identifies text written by the sender, while an odd number of markers identifies text by the recipient. (In the above example even numbers are Joe's text and odd numbers are Mary's.)

 No problem. 6pm it is then. --Jim
 
 At 10.01am Wednesday, Danny wrote:
 <span style="color:red">> Whoa! I need to email a report at 5:30.
 > Could you push it back an hour? --Danny
 >
 > At 9.40am Wednesday, Jim wrote:
 >
 </span><span style="color:blue">>> I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
 >> minutes tonight, starting at 5pm. --Jim</span>

In HTML messages, <code>[[Blockquote element|blockquote]]</code> or <code>dl</code> elements may be nested to achieve the same effect.

===Attribution lines===
Quoted material is often preceded by an ''attribution line'' that identifies its author.  These lines are particularly helpful in discussions between multiple parties. For example:

 Nancy wrote:
 <span style="color:red">> Peter wrote:</span>
 <span style="color:blue">>> When will we have the performance figures?</span>
 <span style="color:red">> The tests will be completed next week. </span>
 
 Peter wrote:
 <span style="color:red">> Mary wrote:</span>
 <span style="color:blue">>> We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.</span>
 <span style="color:red">> Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.</span>
 
 I agree with Peter.  We need the sales data and also Nancy's
 performance figures.  Let's meet next Friday after lunch.

This reply quotes two messages, one by Nancy (itself a reply to Peter) and one by Peter (itself a reply to Mary).

Many mail agents will add these attribution lines automatically to the top of the quoted material.  Note that a newly added attribution line should not get the quotation marker, since it is not part of the quoted text; so that the level indicator of the attribution line is always one less than the corresponding text. Doing otherwise may confuse the reader and also e-mail interfaces that choose the text color according to the number of leading markers.

Instead of an attribution line, one may indicate the author by a comment in brackets, at the beginning of the quotation:

 <span style="color:blue">>> [Peter:] When will we have the performance figures?</span>
 <span style="color:red">> [Nancy:] The tests will be completed next week. </span>
 <span style="color:blue">>> [Mary:] We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.</span>
 <span style="color:red">> [Peter:] Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.</span>
 
 I agree with Peter.  We need the sales data and Nancy's
 performance figures.  Let's meet next Friday after lunch.

Another alternative, used in [[Fidonet]] and some [[mail user agent]]s, is to place the initials of the author before the quoting marker. This may be used with or without attribution lines:

 Nancy wrote:
 <span style="color:red">N> Peter wrote:</span>
 <span style="color:blue">P>> When will we have the performance figures?</span>
 <span style="color:red">N> The tests will be completed next week. </span>
 
 Peter wrote:
 <span style="color:red">P> Mary wrote:</span>
 <span style="color:blue">M>> We should meet today to discuss the marketing strategy.</span>
 <span style="color:red">P> Better wait, we do not have the West Coast sales data yet.</span>
 
 I agree with Peter.  We need the sales data and also Nancy's
 performance figures.  Let's meet next Friday after lunch.