Quoting electronic messages

Summary of the most important items

• Correct quoting makes it easier for the people you are writing to
• Remove excessive text in your quote
• Write your text under the text you are answering to
• Use spaces between your text and the text you are answering to

Why should i follow your advice for quoting?

We aren't the ones making the advice, it has grown through decades of written communication on the internett.

The recipient will therefore appriciate you following these advice, and remember, the recipient is the most important person. You allready know what you mean yourself.

You will be a good example for others who has not learned the proper practice of quoting.

Why is this easier for the recipient?

• Your text will be easier to read
• It will become easier to follow the discussion
• You save resources in the transfer and on the recipients email- / news client where the messages will be saved
• People take you more seriously

Remove all excessive text

If the one you are communicating with has written 100 lines of text, but you're only quoting the last paragraph, it's meaningless not to remove the extra text.

This saves resources, and makes it easier for the recipient to see the connection between what you wrote and what you are answering to.

When replying: Show what you are quoting

Show what you are answering to and what you wrote yourself. You show this by entering the characters "> " ("larger than" followed by a space) on the first line of the lines you are quoting.

Most email- and newsclients do this automaticly.

Write your text under the quote

In a normal conversation you would answer after somebody said something to you, not before. The same goes for written communication.

Separate the text you are quoting

If you are answering to two different parts of the text, you should separate these parts from eachother when answering. This way the recipient knows what you are answering to.

Use a line feed between your response and the quote

Make a line feed between what you are answering to and your response.

If you separate what you are answering to, you should put two line feeds between your response and the next quote.

Eksempel:

> This is the first qoute

Here we have one line feed and respond to the first qoute.


> We place the second qoute after two line feeds.

Here is the respons to the second qoute.

Use a signature divider and correct signature

Usually your recipients wont find it interesting to read your contact information or funny quotes etc. each time they recieve a message from you. Some clients can hide signatures in messages, provided that you use the correct signature divider. The dividers looks like this: "-- ", that is two hyphen and a space on their own line before the signature.

The signature should not exceed four lines.

Other guidelines for written communication

Written communication is hard. Read our guidelines for communicating in writing. You can also read guidelines to email writing and our guidelines for using newsgroups.