The problem of excessive quoting in replies posted to discussion lists,
particularly the inclusion of signature blocks and bottom banners, is a
frequent topic of discussion on this list. Earlier today, one of our list
owners reported that LISTSERV strips the trailing blank from the conventional
signature delimiter.

As far as I can determine, there is no formal standard regarding the structure 
of the signature delimiter, however, the use of newline-dash-dash-blank-newline
("-- ") is a convention that has been widely recognized for years. Many email
clients have been designed to recognize this delimiter, and omit the delimiter
and everything after it when quoting the original message in a reply. If
LISTSERV did not strip the trailing blank from the signature delimiter, most
email clients would omit the signature block and bottom banner when quoting the
original message in the reply.

I have confirmed that LISTSERV 1.8e exhibits this behavior  Does anyone know
whether later versions of LISTSERV also exhibit this behavior?

-- 
Paul Russell, Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame
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