Subject: RE: Two suggestions for a better forum<br/>
Date: Mar 31, 2004 @ 08:27<br/>
Author: Martin Pratt (&quot;Martin Pratt&quot; &lt;m.a.pratt@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-312816218">I wholeheartedly endorse Dave&#39;s plea for BP members to delete<br/>
unnecessary text from previous messages from their postings (BP 13802).<br/>
Far from assisting the reader to follow the thread of a discussion,<br/>
including lengthy unedited extracts of previous messages usually only<br/>
serves to obscure the main message, especially when the formatting has<br/>
been lost. Since the list has readily accessible archives, there&#39;s<br/>
really no need to include anything from previous messages except the<br/>
message number and possibly short extracts to which you wish to respond<br/>
_directly_.  <br/>
<br/>
There are a number of free tools available for &#39;cleaning&#39; email text<br/>
that has become filled with unwanted line breaks and reply quotation<br/>
marks - see for example Mr Ed&#39;s Email Bracket Stripper at<br/>
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.mistered.us/stripper/index.shtml.">http://www.mistered.us/stripper/index.shtml.</a> Microsoft Outlook users<br/>
might also like to check out eClean 2000<br/>
(<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.jd-software.com/eClean2000/index.html)">http://www.jd-software.com/eClean2000/index.html)</a>, which only costs<br/>
US$10 and allows the user to clean up messages from within Outlook with<br/>
just a few clicks. Please think about making use of such resources<br/>
before hitting &#39;send&#39;.<br/>
<br/>
While we&#39;re on the subject of making messages easier to read, I&#39;d be<br/>
grateful if Mike Donner could explain why he is so opposed to the use of<br/>
punctuation and capital letters? Such conventions exist to help the<br/>
reader and I am sure I am not alone in finding it hard to follow much of<br/>
what you write, Mike. For someone who is so punctilious in your pursuit<br/>
of points around the world, it is rather ironic that you appear so<br/>
hostile to their use in your writing!<br/>
<br/>
m a r t i n</div>