Before I started working at Microsoft, I used to always reply to emails by quoting them, breaking up the quoted text into pieces and then replying to each of the pieces directly below, for example:
From: andrew@reenigne.org To: xyz@example.com Subject: Re: Hello Xyz <xyz@example.com> wrote: > Hello, Hello! > how are you today I'm fine, thank you.
This style is called inline replying with trimming. This is a fine system because the person I'm replying to gets reminded of what they wrote, and I don't have to write things like "In regards to the part of your email where you asked me how I was today,".
The most common other system is top posting, which looks like this:
From: andrew@reenigne.org To: xyz@example.com Subject: Re: Hello Hello! I'm fine, thank you. Xyz <xyz@example.com> wrote: > Hello, how are you today
This is the natural default with Microsoft Outlook. In the geek circles I had moved in before working at Microsoft, this style was greatly frowned upon. However, it is ubiquitous at Microsoft. I'm not sure whether this is because it's the default style in Outlook or whether it's the default style in Outlook because it is ubiquitous at Microsoft. However, once I had forced myself to "do as the Romans do" and top post, I found that it does actually make more sense in that environment. This is for two reasons:
- When the conversation falters due to lack of knowledge about something, it's very common to "loop in" an expert to give their two cents by adding them to the CC line. In order for the expert to have some context, it's useful to have the previous history of the conversation right there in the email, so he or she can read it (bottom to top).
- With each email carrying the entire thread, emails can get pretty long. It's inconvenient to have to scroll all the way to the bottom of each email to see the latest reply (especially if you're just a spectator rather than a contributor to a busy thread) so it's better for the replies to be at the top than at the bottom.
It's still useful to reply inline as well sometimes - at Microsoft this is done by quoting the email you're replying two twice - once, in its entirety, at the bottom and once (suitably chopped and trimmed) inline. I used to do this quite frequently as it's the best way I've found (pre-Argulator) of addressing each point individually. However, one of my managers once told me that if the conversation got sufficiently complex that I felt it was best to do that, I should instead "take it offline" and schedule a face-to-face meeting instead to hash out these issues. However, I felt (and still feel) that inline email replies are better than face-to-face meetings for such complicated issues - in face to face meetings there's less time to think about your answer, and points can get lost - as the conversation progresses it can only follow one "branch" of the argument tree, and without explicitly maintaining a stack it's very easy for branches to get forgotten about.
What I hate even more than that is when someone sends me a long winded question which I reply to with a few sentences either asking for some clarification or some basic steps to solve their issue then I get a reply a week later with a bit more detail but not including any of the original message.