On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Wayne Smith wrote:

> ...  When people had 300 baud modems and really dumb mail
> reading software, every character seemed to count.  Now with
> faster links, what's the gain in worrying about including some
> junk at the end of a post?

Your point about speed of transmission is well-taken. But, when
a list exists for purposes of discussion, with give-and-take
replies to earlier postings, we need to consider the time it
takes for the people replying to wade through the text (to make
sure there are no embedded comments, to make sure there is no
_intended_ context in that large text for the comments from the
person being replied to which should be understood, and for the
time it takes then for the respondent to delete the unnecessary
blocks of text (not always at the "end") so that his reply
doesn't also create an even more convoluted read/edit for the
next person to reply.
Peter