Language and the Internet

116 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET

(1)

I hope to be there by six, though everything depends on the

trains. Will you be coming by train yourself, or are you driving this

time? I know Fred is bringing his car.

(2)

>I hope to be there by six, though everything depends on the

>trains. Will you be coming by train yourself, or are you driving

>this time? I know Fred is bringing his car.

The reaction may then be added, in any of three locations: above the
whole of the received message, below it, or within it – repeatedly,
if necessary.

Above Within Below

reply >received message >extract from

>received message reply received message

>extract from reply

received message

reply

>extract from

received message

The procedure is a little like adding notes at the beginning or end
of a letter, or in the margins, and returning it to the sender – but
with the difference that in e-mail both parties end up with a perfect
copy of everything.
All three methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Putting the reply first gets to the point straight away, but the receiver
often has to scroll down to be reminded of what the person is react-
ing to – often necessary, if time has passed since sending the original
message. Putting the reply at the end avoids this problem, but forces
the receiver to scroll through a message which may be totally famil-
iar – as it would be if it had been sent only a few minutes before. The
former option is preferred in many professional settings, where it
has become standard practice to reply to a steadily growing chain of
e-messages by adding the latest response at the beginning, because
when a tailback of messages becomes extensive, it is then very awk-
ward to find a message located at the end and to print it out. In those