A handy stick with which older netizens can beat newbies. At some time in the mid-1990s, many people without USENET access acquired it. Some USENET oldtimers resented this. One characteristic of the newbies was many of them used some piece of software, Microsoft Outlook Express perhaps, was configured in such a way that by default if you just typed a reply it went at the top of the message, above the material to which it was replying. At about that time, in some newsgroups, people started viciously attacking the practice of "top-posting" and asserting that it was bad netiquette. I've participated in USENET since about 1990. At that time, bottom posting was the norm but top posting was not at all uncommon. It was a matter of personal style and nobody ever commented on it. It is simply not true that there was any prohibition on it. There is an unofficial RFC 1855, e.g. http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/ rfc1855.html which is sometime quoted as deprecating top-posting. But it is clear from context that the point of the RFC is _primarily_ concerned with _not_ quoting the the entire original ("It is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material"), and the fact that it mentions putting the summary at the top seems incidental. The actual text is: "If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just enough text of the original to give a context. This will make sure readers understand when they start to read your response. Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!" It is very much like splitting an infinitive. Don't split infinitives if you know your copy will be edited by someone who thinks there's something wrong with splitting infinitives. But do know that these people have nothing to back themselves up with; even Fowler's English Usage sees nothing wrong with it. Similarly if you are participating in a group that contains people that dislike top-posting, don't do it. But don't be gulled into believing that there's more here than personal taste. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l