Re: Initialling Quoted Texts

From: John Edser (edser_at_tpg.com.au)
Date: 06/25/04 

Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 05:28:51 +0000 (UTC)

> JE:-
> Why not simply initial all quoted text so that
> anybody can easily see who said what, as Josh
> our esteemed moderator recommended.
>

NAS:-
You have answered your own question, John. I didn't type the above
text.

JE:-
My apologies. However, if the parts of the text
I quoted had been initialled at the start
of the first quote, I could
not have made this mistake. Nature can stamp
genomes with the hand of the previous author
using methylation. Why not learn from nature?
All this confusion about who said what
as text is quoted and requoted, only has one
rational answer IMHO: initial all quoted text
blocks from the _start_ of the quoting process.
In this way authorship can never be lost.

NAS:-
Surely it is easier to just quote as many lines of "X wrote", "Y
wrote" etc as required at the top of the post, and then simply count
the number of ">"s preceding each line of text to work out who typed
it?

JE:-
Not necessarily. If, like myself you receive sbe
as an email, these ">"s can become all mixed up.
Even within news format, this can happen. Why
should anybody try to count garbled lines when
just a simple initial, at the start of quoting
always remains unambiguous no matter how far down
the line the text block or part thereof is
quoted making less work for the reader?

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

PO Box 266
Church Pt
NSW 2105
Australia

edser@tpg.com.au