Hi all! Got an eloquent request this morning to remind everyone how important it is to TRIM OFF most of the quoted material in responses to ROOTS messages. Why? Well, among other things, all the messages from the day get clumped together into the digest. People reading the digest just scroll through it. So if the first message is a request for information, and the second a response (quoting the full request AND the directions on how to unsubscribe), and the third message is a response to that response (quoting the entire second message, so thus another copy of the first message, plus TWO copies of the directions on how to unsubscribe), and the fourth message ... You get my drift. I've been told that etiquette "requires" that one quote the entire message to which one is responding. No, it doesn't. List etiquette is to quote nothing or just a snippet, so there's context for the response. Everything else is unnecessary fluff. I've been told that the e-mail program being used doesn't "allow" for the original message to be trimmed off. Yes, it does. But I don't use the same program (anyone else still using elm?), so I can't explain how. In gmail, just highlight the whole thing and hit backspace, poof!, it's gone. I've been told that the quoted material wasn't even there, when the response was written. Presumably hackers or some such inserted it, after "send" was hit. Nope, it was there all along. On gmail, it's those three greyed out dots at the bottom ... click on them and boom! there's all that quoted material. I've been told none of this works when using a SmartPhone. Maybe, I don't know, but check out the next suggestion. If all else fails, just start a NEW message. Address it to roots@rootsweb.com, but something descriptive in the subject line, add a bit of context and carry on: I was interested to read Susie's query about the Griznatch family of Puyallup. I have a Griznatch connection, but in Boston. Etc. Have a great day! Karen karen@mtpinos.com P.S. I don't really have any Griznatches and probably Susie doesn't, either.