Folks, I haven't posted a notice on this subject in some time and I guess it's about time to do it again. Most users of these Lists know by now that when they reply to a post, they should quote back ONLY enough of the original post to identify it and its subject; however, as new users join us every day, some of them just are not aware they should trim down replies so that they don't contain all the original messages. Nothing is more aggravating to users than to see a very long post, THEN to see users reply back with a line or two of comment, AND ALL of the original post! QUOTING BACK ALL OF AN ORIGINAL MESSAGE IS NOT NECESSARY! Usually, including the first 2 or 3 lines of an email is all that is needed to allow others to see what is being responded to. For "newbies" (not a pejorative term, I assure you), who may be new to using a computer, there are some tips and tricks that will make things easier for you. Now, in different email programs, it will require different techniques to rid a reply of most of the original post; however, some basic techniques will help. To "highlight" text in a message (or in ANY document, for that matter), put the mouse cursor at the BEGINNING of the text you wish to highlight. While holding down the LEFT mouse button, "drag" the cursor to the end of the text you want highlighted, and release the mouse button. Your chosen text will be highlighted. Now, you can do several things with that text. If you hit the DELETE key, the text will disappear. If you hit CTRL+C, you will copy the text into your Windows Clip Board. The text in the Clip Board can be inserted into another document, email, etc., by placing the mouse cursor at the spot where you want it inserted, left-clicking once, and then hitting CTRL+V. That will "paste" the Clip Board text where you want it. In some email programs, such as Eudora, if you highlight text before clicking on the "Reply" button, the reply will contain ONLY that highlighted text. In other email programs, you have to hit "Reply" first, then highlight unwanted text and deleting it. No matter HOW you do it, you should NOT quote back all of an original post, unless it is very short, 3 or 4 lines, AND you feel it is important to quote all of it. In the past, I have posted "Keyboard Shortcuts" for Windows to these Lists, for use by new computer users. CTRL+C and CTRL+V are only two of the many, many shortcuts that you can use in virtually any Windows program/utility. If any of you are "newbies" and want me to post again, I will. Just let me know. Just for the record, the REASONS for not quoting back entire original text are many. 1) One is that many users just get tired of having to download long emails with a few dozen words of new text. Some users STILL pay for their server connections by the minutes/hours of usage each month. For them, downloading long, useless text is expensive. 2) Sending emails with unnecessary verbiage causes more load on the "pipelines" of the net/web. 3) Since all posts to these Lists are "Archived" at Rootsweb, that means it takes up unnecessary disk space on Rootsweb's servers. 4) Many users subscribe to these Lists in the Digest Mode. That means they don't receive each email as it is posted at Rootsweb; instead, they receive a Digest which contains several posts in one email. For those Digest subscribers who want to print out Digests, it either wastes paper and ink to print unnecessary text, OR they have to highlight and delete lots and lots of text BEFORE printing. 5) Many users, such as I, save all List emails on our home computers for future reference. If an original post was, say, 10,000 bytes in size, and a user replies to it with one line of new text, such as, "I agree", or "Thank you", or whatever, it means that when we save the reply, we are having to store 10,000 bytes of absolutely unnecessary text. Multiple that by several emails a day for some of these Lists, and multiply that by 2 or 3 dozen Lists, and you can see how it starts to add up month after month. One last pet peeve of mine: a user posts a very long email, say 10,000 bytes in length; another user replies, including all of the original post; another user replies to the reply and includes all of the replier's text AND the original text; another user replies to that, and so on. Can you see how absolutely ugly such replies to replies to replies to original posts are? Yes, I know SOME of us are so busy we don't (or don't WANT to) have the time to format emails correctly. I manage 21 Mailing Lists at Rootsweb; I subscribe to another 2 or 3 dozen; I receive at least 2 dozen personal emails daily; I reply to probably 25- 50 emails daily; yet, I have the time to highlight and delete as needed. So can anyone else have the time - all that is necessary is for you to TAKE the time. I know this is a rather long notice; however, this subject is one of the most aggravating for Listowners and users. It's not something we should HAVE to live with, since it can be corrected. All it takes is for the knowledge to be spread and for the recipients to have the courtesy to comply. Let's all do our part to cut down on unnecessary text in emails. What say? Regards, SgtGeorge George W. Durman Listowner