Going back to ancient (in computer years) history.... 80 characters
was the number of columns on the IBM punch card. And 79
characters is still the line limit for many IBM lines. The 80th
character is a check character (i think. it's been awhile) On the
web, a line can go one forever... or at least it seems that way. It
may not be related, but I'm suspicious when the same numbers
turn up in many different places.

Dan Robinson
[log in to unmask]

On 27 Oct 00, at 8:05, Liz Marr wrote:

> This is a function of your mail software.  The way to get around it is to use Listserv
> continuation format when processing commands that are longer than 80 characters.
>  Here is the excerpt from the manual:
>
> //<space><beginning of command><space><comma>
> <continuation of command><space><comma>
> <continuation of command>....
>
> On 26 Oct 2000, at 12:03, John Castilla wrote:
>
> > I have been trying to figure out why there is a carriage return after
> > the 79th character. If I send from a web based email address this does
> > not occur. Only when I send it through Listserv does this occur. Do you
> > know if there is a setting which I can tweak for line width or am I
> > looking in the wrong direction. Below is a sample of what I sent to
> > Listserv and received back.
>