Donald,

Sorry, but no, they are not on webpages, *yet*.  I periodically just write a "lecture", retaining and revising some as I go.  Many of them pertain to the subject matter of the list and having been written hurriedly, are not great works of literature.  I basically laid out a few very simple steps in one (each line followed by a paragraph):

1.  Hit the reply key;
2.  Write your comments, interleaved with the quoted text, deleting quoted text not needed as you write;
3.  Move your comments to the top and combine them, checking for spelling, grammar, and clarity;
4.  Delete every quoted word not needed including salutations, signature lines, banners, etc.;
5.  Take five, re-read your post for clarity, brevity, and sense, edit as needed, and THEN send it.

Common sense to most of us, but you'd be surprised ......

For every recurrent problem, I write a template.  You can set these to be sent to individual subscribers on a rotating basis every X number of days using the Probe function, which Douglas would be better at explaining than I.

The problems with overquoting are numerous.  Overutilliaztion of bandwidth and resources, needless repetition of comment, particularly annoying when reading a digest, and problematic when searching the archives as a phrase searched upon can be included in a results list more often than required, resulting in wasted time flipping through repetetive material.

Michael McNeil


At 09:23 AM 6/19/01 -0500, Good, Donald wrote:

>From: Michael McNeil [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>
>>I have inventoried several "instructional" pages on everything from how to
>
>Are these available on a web page?
>
>I never even considered overquoting as a problem.  I don't think I ever saw
>it in any "netiquette" FAQ's.  As a matter of fact, when this thread
>started, I thought it only referred to the > placed at the beginning of
>lines in a reply by some email programs.