[plug] Top posting?

[Onno Benschop]

On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:56, Adam Davin wrote:
> I was on the "opendos" list way back when it was active. We had a few
> people on the list who were sight impaired and used text to speech
> technologies. That list was in the habit of top posting from the point
> of view that people didn't want to have to "listen" to the entire
> conversation again as they were following the thread anyway. 

This is the *first* argument I've heard in 14 years that provides any
merit whatsoever for top-posting. As you'll note, it hasn't persuaded me
to change, but I'll admit to having to seriously think about it.

Perhaps, my paragraph response also illustrates *why* I think
top-posting is bad. The word "This" in the preceding paragraph refers to
the whole quoted argument provided by Adam in a previous email. If the
paragraph I wrote needed to make sense on its own, it would have to be
re-written like this:
        Sight impaired people using screen readers is the *first*...

Now, I could in fact do that, but from a sequence of events perspective,
I'd also have to state somewhere that Adam wrote it, so then it would
become:
        As Adam suggested, sight impaired people using screen readers is
        the *first*...

Then to be complete, I'd likely have to include a date, and likely a
full name, and by then you are well on the way to a quoted paragraph
with my response to it.

Thus, top-posting is basically in my opinion a habit of laziness akin to
the use of "U" for you and "R" for are, combined with poor English and
Grammar. In my opinion it speaks poorly of those who use it.

Cheers,

Onno Benschop 

Connected via Optus B3 at S27°52'30" - E151°16'25" (Millmerran, QLD)
-- 
()/)/)()        ..ASCII for Onno.. 
|>>?            ..EBCDIC for Onno.. 
--- -. -. ---   ..Morse for Onno.. 

Proudly supported by Skipper Trucks, Highway1, Concept AV, Sony Central, Dalcon
ITmaze - ABN: 56 178 057 063 - ph: 04 1219 8888 - onno at itmaze dot com dot au