Fiction doesn’t interest me the way it use to. That being said, I do read some fiction.I’d like to concentrate on the classics. Ive read a LOT of them.
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This reminds me of my unpopular take: I wish that HTML never came to e-mail and wish that e-mail remained in plain text. I dislike highly styled e-mail messages.
On that point, I wish that I there was an option to view HTML e-mail as plain text. I often get these highly formatted emails and want to read the text on my Apple Watch. I’d like to be able to read the text on the go.
It is so cathartic reading the comments in this post. I appreciate how everyone posting here has been candid, while remaining polite and respectful, too. This whole MPU forum is proof to me that civilized discourse–among highly opinionated people–is still alive.
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That used to be an option with Outlook and some other clients. I don’t know if this information is still valid.
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sounds good to me too. styles are overrated. 
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I like the amount of styling you can get with vanilla Markdown. Links, italics, basic headings, etc. That stuff increases legibility.
It’s when you start drawing tables and image slicing that everything goes to hell in a handbasket. 
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HTML email has poisoned my mind. I got a plain-text email from a company a couple months ago after visiting their booth at a conference. Instead of being happy to see it, my first thought was “so they’re not putting any effort into making this look professional? Weird.”
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Yes!!! And replies should be inline instead of top posted! 
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I’ve actually seen groups that argue that inline replies are universally considered to be “rude”. Um…tell that to, quite literally, the people that basically invented the Internet. 
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This is the e-mail equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. HA!
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Fascinating. What is the theory behind feeling inline comments are rude? I’ve tried using inline replies in my emails and I must confess that most lawyers don’t get it. In fact, there is a substantial risk the recipient won’t read below the quoted text thinking that was the start of their message and there is no reply below. So those of us who use this default to putting some comment in the introduction, like “Note, COMMENTS INLINE AND IN ALL CAPS.” It’s so uncivilized.
I think the idea is that some people don’t “get it” because they expect top posting, or that you’re forcing them to re-read the entire thread to understand your reply.
None of which is an issue, of course, if you trim your replies. And if somebody doesn’t want to read the context, they can just scroll and read the non-quoted parts.
[Foghorn Leghorn]The one thing I can’t abide, I say just can’t abide son, is folks that reply *on the same line * as the original message, but in different colors.[/Foghorn Leghorn]
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I still have one, though the WiFi is iffy, and so it needs Ethernet
I can see how it would be considered rude because you’re going through and seemingly nitpicking every thought individually instead of evaluating an entire thought process. It can seem curt. Some people are bullet pointers, and others like narratives.
I’ll format my emails different depending on the situation. If I’m asking a bunch of questions, then I’ll bullet point them and feel free to inline reply. If I’m trying to understand a problem as a whole and write a narrative (as in paragraphs, not bullet points) then I guess I would that type of conversation back.
I think more often than not, when I see inline responses in the wild, it is in the midst of an argument where logic is trying to persuade narrative and neither person is listening to each other. Logic is saying points 2, 3, and 5 are wacky, and narrative says but you’re ignoring the context around it.
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I prefer top posted. I also prefer that the snippet of the info I am replying to or getting a reply from to be just below the answer and not the whole message.
Inline comments, especially those in all caps or a different color are extremely difficult for me to process. The only people who I correspond with who do it that way are are invariably making arguments or CYA message replies because I’ve called them out on something that they did wrong and they are trying to justify inexcusable actions. Since some of these may end up in a court battle it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
OTOH if I’ve sent an email with a long detailed set of requests for items or info I have no problem at all if the person quotes a snippet and then on top puts the answer and does that for each section as separate emails. I used to send one request or 1 set of related requests for info in a single email but then the recipients complained that they got 10 emails from me all at once. Personally I’d prefer separate emails but I seem to be in the minority on that one. So I’ll do the long detailed email with bullet points and then accept multiples back.
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That is what I consider rude. I HATE getting all caps messages.
I’d much rather see top posted mutiple messages if there are several things the recipient wants to reply back to me about.
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Maybe this is just a custom among attorneys, and maybe only entertainment attorneys at that. The whole message is not in caps. Just the responses to what someone else wrote so that they are distinguishable from the other person’s text. Something like this.
Dear Ms. Powerful:
We have read your comments for Blockbuster Productions, LLC’s option agreement for Soon-to-be-Famous Screenwriter’s screenplay called “The Oscar Winner.” Our responses are inline below in brackets and ALL CAPS.
Very truly yours,
Tom Vidal
Reply to JZPWRFL@lawfirm, on 2/3/2022 @ 8:00 A.M. J. Powerful wrote:
Dear Mr. Vidal:
We have reviewed the option agreement for Blockbuster Productions, LLC and have the following comments. Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter will agree to the deal under the following circumstances.
Reduce the option period rom X to Y. [THE PRODUCTION WILL NOT AGREE TO THIS; HOWEVER, WE WILL BREAKT THE OPTION INTO A FIRST OPTION AND A RENEWAL WITH A SECOND OPTION PAYMENT FOR THE RENEWAL PERIOD.]
Eliminate the ceiling on the purchase price. [WE WILL INCREASE THE CEILING, BUT PRODCO FEELS A CEILING IS STILL NECESSARY FOR THE PICTURE.]
Contingent compensation definition to be MFN with the director. [NO MFN WITH THE DIRECTOR, BUT WE WILL AGREE TO MFN WITH ANY OTHER WRITERS]
Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter agrees to the credit and would also like an executive producer credit. [OK]
Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter also wants to be engaged as a consultant on the picture. [NO.]
Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter will only agree to first class airfare and accommodations for travel to any celebrity premieres and festivals. [THE BUDGET DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS; BUT PRODCO WILL AGREE TO USE GOOD FAITH EFFORTS TO OBTAIN THE DISTRIBUTOR’S AGREEMENT TO SOON-TO-BE-FAMOUS’S REQUEST.]
Very truly yours,
Jane Z. Powerful
I don’t love this either, which circles us back to my original comment. All caps is annoying. We all know what the more elegant approach would be to handling this.
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Yes, that’s exactly the sort of message that drives me nuts.
What would make it far more readable for me is to have the answer separated from the text thet is being quoted by a single empty line, clear quote level lines to the left for the proper level of quoting and then the answer in normal upper and lower case as appropriate.
Eliminate the ceiling on the purchase price.
[We will increase the ceiling, but ProdCo feels a ceiling is still necessary for the picture]
Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter agrees to the credit and would also like an executive producer credit.
[OK]
Soon-To-Be-Famous screenwriter will only agree to first class airfare and accommodations for travel to any celebrity premieres and festivals.
[The budget does not support this…]
and so on.
But I suspect that my preference is just a quirk of all caps being shoouting and aggressive and not subject to any back and forth or discussion. And yes, the folks that write with all caps to me tend to be lawyers or folks in the process of turning the conversation into evidence for a legal action so my sample is biased.
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See, this is my frequent objection to top posting. If we’re discussing anything with any amount of detail, frequently top posting results in very surface-level replies.
That said, there’s a whole bunch of crazy culture around email.
People send a question on the order of “what’s the meaning of life?”, and get upset because your response is longer than the question.
Or you send an email with three questions, and they’ll reply with “yes”.
I had a boss once that indicated that he just wouldn’t read emails longer than two sentences. And while I get “brevity”, he was also the sort of person who wanted things just so many times, and with people like that you can’t just say “a or b”, because they’ll usually object to something about each and you need them to agree to the tradeoffs.
When people actually wrote letters and couldn’t just copy/paste, it wasn’t uncommon at all to get a letter that contained phrases like “in regard to _____” multiple times, as they addressed multiple points. That can still be done in email if you top-post, but sometimes it’s just easier to quote what they said and reply.
I think @iPersuade’s thought process is more in line with my own, and probably because we’re both in professions where detail and the reasons you get to a particular point can matter significantly.
I do agree with @OogieM though that I prefer blank lines between replies, just for clarity. And at the point where you do that, you probably eliminate the need for all-caps.
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I think for the most part these lawyers do this out of tech ignorance not any kind of intentional strategy. I tried to bring in the open source community e-mail strategies but my efforts have yielded no discernible results.
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This just baffles me. It’s like people who speak perfectly fine English and are perfectly capable of writing coherent sentences suddenly lose that ability when they have a computer in front of them. Or they think they’re paying by the word, or that switching letter case carries some sort of upcharge, or something.
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