At Indiana University

Avoid Excessive Quoting

The number one bothersome trait the list owners hear about fairly regularly is excessive quoting. Questions often contain additional information that makes the question complete and detailed. Much of this extra information need not be (and should not be) quoted in the reply.

Far more than half of the CE-L subscribers receive digests instead of individual messages and excessive quoting is even more troublesome there.

Here are two examples -- one illustrating poor quoting practices (although hardly the worst ever seen on the list) and one illustrating good quoting practices. The text has been obscured. Cryptographers among the group may try to break the "code" but will likely be stymied because each of the 2 messages uses a different system, all vowels have been replaced by a single vowel, and many consonants have been replaced by a single consonant. My intent was to use real messages to illustrate the problem but not to embarrass anyone in doing so.

Avoid this

Quote this way

Summarizing is a good choice

Geoff Hart's replies are excellent examples to emulate. Instead of quoting, Geoff takes a little extra time and summarizes ("Nemo Nemetsky asked about the use of the cereal comma on a box of Raisin Bran ....") So instead of quoting even a few lines of text, he covers the question concisely in just a line or two.

We don't all have the time or the inclination to summarize, but we should all at least be able to edit the quoted material to omit those parts that have little bearing on the answer.

Why is excessive quoting a problem?

The Indiana University Listserv server generates a digest for Copyediting-L whenever it has received a total of 500 lines. Excessive quoting generates unnecessary digests. In addition, excessive quoting turns the archive into a spaghetti-like mess.

Before sending a message to the list, please examine it.

Have you deleted (at the very least) the original sender's signature and the archive tag line?
Have you left more of the original text than is necessary for readers to understand what you're responding to?

If the quoted text is longer than your reply, please examine the message again with particular attention to point 2.

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