Editing Posting style (section)

===Top-posting===
<!-- This section is linked from [[Netiquette]] -->
In ''top-posting'' style, the original message is included verbatim, with the reply above it.  It is sometimes referred to by the acronym ''TOFU'' ("text over, fullquote under"). It has also been colloquially referred to as ''Jeopardy!'' reply style: as in the game show's signature clue/response format, the answers precede the question.

Example:
 No problem.  6pm it is then.
 Jim <span style="color:red">
 <br>
 -------- Original Message --------
 '''From:''' Danny <danny@example.com>
 '''Sent:''' Tuesday, October 16, 2007 10:01 AM
 '''To:''' Jim <jim@example.com>
 '''Subject:''' RE: Job
 <br>
 Whoa!  Hold on.  I have a job scheduled at 5:30 which mails out
 a report to key tech staff.  Could you please push it back an hour?
 Danny</span><span style="color:blue">
 <br>
 -------- Original Message --------
 '''From:''' Jim <jim@example.com>
 '''Sent:''' Tuesday, October 16, 2007 9:40 AM
 '''To:''' Danny <danny@example.com>
 '''Subject:''' Job
 <br>
 I'm going to suspend the mail service for approx. thirty
 minutes tonight, starting at 5pm, to install some updates
 and important fixes.
 Jim</span>

Top-posting preserves an apparently unmodified transcript of a branch in the conversation.  Often all replies line up in a single branch of a conversation.  The top of the text shows the latest replies.  This appears to be advantageous for business correspondence, where an e-mail thread can dupe others into believing it is an "official" record.{{citation needed|date=April 2016}}

By contrast, excessive indentation of interleaved and bottom posting may turn difficult to interpret.  If the participants have different stature such as manager vs. employee or consultant vs. client, one person's cutting apart another person's words without the full context may look impolite or cause misunderstanding.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

In the earlier days of [[Usenet]] informal discussions where everyone was an equal encouraged bottom-posting.  Until the mid-1990s, posts in a net.newcomers newsgroup insisted on interleaving replies.  Usenet [[Comp.* hierarchy|''comp.lang'' hierarchy]], especially comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++ insisted on the same as of the 2010s. The [[Alt.* hierarchy|''alt'' hierarchy]] tolerated top-posting. Newer online participants, especially those with limited experience of Usenet, tend to be less sensitive to arguments about posting style.

Top-posting can be problematic on mailing lists with ongoing discussions which eventually require someone to act on the top-posted material. For example, top-posting "Those changes look ok to me, go ahead and make them" can be very inconvenient, as readers may need to read through a long email trail to know which changes the top-poster is referring to. Inter-leaving the text directly below the text describing the changes is much more convenient in these cases.

Users of [[handheld device|mobile devices]], like [[smartphone]]s, are encouraged to use top-posting because the devices may only download the beginning of a message for viewing.  The rest of the message is only retrieved when needed, which takes additional download time.  Putting the relevant content at the beginning of the message requires less bandwidth, less time, and less scrolling for the user.<ref>[http://danwarne.com/my-rapidly-growing-email-habit/ My rapidly growing email habit] ({{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070119091029/http://danwarne.com/my-rapidly-growing-email-habit/ |date=January 19, 2007 }}) blog post.</ref><ref>[http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2001-07/1670.html  Stopping SirCam] ({{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928035410/http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2001-07/1670.html |date=September 28, 2007 }}) postfix.org mailing list.</ref><ref>[http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/jdev/2006-June/083465.html Top Posting and Mobiles]—[[Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol|Jabber]] mailing list.</ref>

Top-posting is a natural consequence of the behavior of the "reply" function in many current e-mail readers, such as [[Microsoft Outlook]], [[Gmail]], and others. By default, these programs insert into the reply message a copy of the original message (without headers and often without any extra indentation or quotation markers), and position the editing [[cursor (computers)|cursor]] above it.{{dubious|reason=Positioning the cursor above makes perfect sense for bottom-posting as well, as the quoted text must be edited and replied to from top to bottom.|date=March 2023}} Moreover, a bug present on most flavours of Microsoft Outlook caused the quotation markers to be lost when replying in plain text to a message that was originally sent in HTML/RTF.{{Citation needed|date=April 2011}} 
For these and possibly other reasons, many users seem to accept top-posting as the "standard" reply style.

Partially because of Microsoft's influence, top-posting is very common on [[Electronic mailing list|mailing list]]s and in personal e-mail.<ref name="Intelligently">{{Cite web
 |url          = http://content.techrepublic.com.com/5254-6257-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=173898&messageID=1928226&id=3923716
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20080308060319/http://content.techrepublic.com.com/5254-6257-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=173898&messageID=1928226&id=3923716
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-date = 2008-03-08
 |title        = reply intelligently to e-mail
 |date         = 2006-01-19
 |format       = blog post and responses
 |work         = TechRepublic
 |access-date   = 2013-04-12
}}</ref><ref name="Top posting freebsd">{{Cite web
| url = http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2004-March/thread.html#40694
| title = Top posting
| access-date = 2007-01-11

| date = 2004-03-19
| format = Mailing list thread
| work = [[FreeBSD]] mailing list
}}</ref><ref name="Microsoftish">{{Cite web
| url = http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Oct/index.html#1698
| title = Top-posting is so Microsoftish
| access-date = 2007-01-11

| date = 2002-10-13
| format = Mailing list thread
| work = SuSE Linux English discussion
|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20041224190115/http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-linux-e/2002-Oct/1698.html
|archive-date=2004-12-24 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book
|last=Kennedy
|first=Angus J.
|author2=Peter Buckley |author3=Duncan Clark
 |editor=Andrew Dickson
|title= The Rough Guide to the Internet 9
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=umvBESswHH8C&pg=RA5-PA241
|format=Google Book Search
|access-date=2007-01-11
|edition=2004
|date=October 2003
|publisher=Penguin Books
|location=London
|isbn=1-84353-101-1
|pages=241
|quote=It used to be taboo to reply at the top of a message ("top posting") until Microsoft made it the default setting}}</ref>

Top-posting has always been the standard format for forwarding a message to a third party, in which case the comments at the top (if any) are a "cover note" for the recipient.