Prisoner said:
Yeah, but so do blogs and e-mail.
Many people use inline quoting in email, so that statement often isn't
true. Nor is it relevant.
Usenet existed long before blogs, and may well predate the first MUA
that used top-quoting by default. mailx used an external editor, so it
didn't define a quoting behavior per se, but the ~m command formatted
quoted text for inline quotation (ie, indented with a configurable
prefix). VMS Mail's "reply/extract" just copied the original text into
the new message unchanged; quoting style was left to the user. VM/CMS
MAIL favored inline quoting with REPLY TEXT - it copied the message
text into the editor, and suggested you insert lines for you reply
into the quoted text using PF2.
There seems to be a widespread belief that Microsoft Outhouse
popularized top-quoting. It's a very late arrival to this party.
Certainly, top-quoting was rare on Usenet prior to AOL and Eternal
September.
LOL! And I'd thought usenet was the pits! =)
You're free to go elsewhere.
I see "blog," "usenet," "texting," and "world wide web" as instances
of "informal conversation"
Gosh, that's insightful. No one has ever made *that* particular
sweeping generalization before. Spoken conversation is usually
informal, too. When you quote someone while you're speaking, do you
say your piece first, and then quote them at the end?
It is just possible that the differences between, say, Usenet and
blogging are significant. Hell, *I* noted some differences in
discourse conventions between email lists and Usenet in an article in
_Works and Days_ some thirteen years ago, and plenty of people were
there before me.
(And calling "world wide web" an "instance of 'informal conversation'"
is not just wildly reductive but a category error. The Web is an
information access method, not a mode of expression.)
...I just don't see the point of MLA/Boswell-
style rules of publication/debate in this medium...I can't believe I'm
the only one who thinks this way....
You're not. There's no shortage of newbies who refuse to learn good
manners.
Well, usenet was started up by academics, I guess,
That's debatable. Truscott and Ellis were graduate students when they
created Usenet, and most of the initial users were either academics or
researchers, but it quickly grew outside that community. Cleveland
Freenet made it generally accessible in 1986, for example. And even
among the early users, few were stereotypical academics in the sense
you mean.
so no surprise that
it was so insistent on MLA rules of publication
OK, cite *anything* from the _MLA Handbook_ that applies to this
discussion. Pick an edition - I think I have most of them.
but come on, this isn't a scientific journal we're creating;
it's just passing notes....
Yes. And the people whom you're asking to read your notes have
conventions that they follow, so it would behoove you to follow them.
Once upon a time, students were required to study a modicum of
rhetoric, including how to appeal to their audience. Would that it
were still so.
I'm sorry, but with all due respect, I cannot follow rules I don't
believe in (I'm just that kind of person).
Fine. No one here needs to read or respond to your postings, either.
I'll be happy to ignore anything else you post that's not properly quoted.
To me, it's not like you or someone else suddenly can't parse my words
or your computer shuts down or something if I had top-posted.
We can. We don't want to. See the difference?
