On Wed, 15 May 2002, Wayne T. Smith wrote:
>I'm sorry if this is rude and arrogant, but plain text e-mail is like
ablack and white television signal ... you can send it, but people are
going to pay more attention a color television signal.<

Actually, I pay much less attention to HTML mail. I open, see that it's
HTML, close, delete. I don't have time to examine it to pick the message
out of the artwork, and I won't take the time.

In addition to the reasons already mentioned, HTML e-mail is often
illegible. When you send plain text, people can choose a typeface and point
size that's comfortable for them to read. When you send HTML mail, you
force them to deal with your choices combined with however their e-mail
programs interpret them.

If a message comes through as formatted HTML, it usually arrives on my
computer in a tiny sans serif font, which means that it has so many minins
in it that I can't tell half the letters apart, or it's in a tiny, ornate
handwriting font that I have to decipher. If it's not formatted, I have to
deal all the HTML coding in plain text. If it comes through as an
attachment, I'll delete it unopened.

>Sending a plain text version with the enhanced text is an acknowledgment
that it may be read by out-of-date technology.<

And this is a bad thing because ... ?

I'm steal---, er, quoting from Bill Blinn's FAQ here:
   For more information about the evils of HTML coding, see
   Gerald E. Boyd's explanation <http://www.expita.com/nomime.html>
   of why "pretty" e-mail is a bad thing and how you can keep your
   e-mail program from sending all that junk.

Wayne, I beg you, go to that URL. If you don't read the whole thing, at
least read the four reasons why it's wrong to send HTML.

HTML is like tobacco. You're not going to offend anybody by not indulging,
but you might if you do.

Cheers,
Deborah