You know about top-posting and bottom-posting? In the old days, people would write mails like this:
> bla bla bla bla > bla bla bla bla > bla bla bla bla Me too!
It was bottom-posting. What people expected to see was that you deleted everything except for the parts you were replying to:
> bla bla All wrong!
For more retro email love, see this essay by Drew DeVault:
But then business came along and people don’t have much time because capitalism, and also it was just nice to have a trail of the entire conversation at the bottom of every mail. You could just forward it to a buddy and they could read up on how we got into the current mess by starting at the bottom and reading upwards. Like you do, like you do. I liked that. Some clients even started hiding the bottom part, requiring an extra click to show the email’s history if you really wanted to look at it.
But these days…
These days I often try to not quote anything at all when replying. I just start with a blank sheet, like back in the days when you wrote letters with a pen on paper. And then just paraphrase for context.
You mentioned Bill Gates in your last email and it reminded me of Microsoft, the enemy of all free software buying GitHub. What a disaster.
Make mails a labour of love again! 😁