Re: Top-Posting And Guideline 3.1

> Enforcing a prohibition on top posting does not
> lead to more comprehension.
>
There are many who disagree with you (hi Joe). Have you seen research to
back your claim?

I submit that this issue is at least as important as other 3.1 criteria such
as marking abbreviations and foreign words.

But really, my main reason for raising this point is to test how guideline
3.1 may be used. Top-posting is really a formatting issue and does not
affect primary content. Eventually I'd like to move onto the much more
tricky issue of clear writing which does affect primary content.

Cheers,
Chris


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Loretta Guarino Reid" <lguarino@adobe.com>
To: "Chris Ridpath" <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
Cc: "Joe Clark" <joeclark@joeclark.org>; "WAI-GL" <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>;
<lguarino@adobe.com>
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 2:05 PM
Subject: Re: Top-Posting And Guideline 3.1


>
> Chris, I think this is a perfect example of why we have struggled so much
around the guidelines for clear writing. There are top-post messages that
> are perfectly comprehensible, and there are non-top-post messages that are
> are very difficult to understand. Enforcing a prohibition on top posting
does not lead to more comprehension. Understanding what makes email
difficult to understand may (or may not) lead the author to avoid top
posting, depending on
> the circumstances.
>
> Loretta
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 29 June 2004 15:18:13 UTC