Donkey Tails (hot dogs with cheddar cheese in a tortilla, then fried)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 9/10/07, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/10/07, Barry Popik <bapopik at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > O.T.:
> > My "chupacabra" post came through as gibberish? I sent it through Gmail,
> > and that doesn't work, either? Oh, great!
>
> And I'm reading it through gmail. Weird.

We've gone around this one a few times... If posts are sent via either
AOL or Gmail, they can result in gibberish for many subscribers
(including those using Gmail) if the text includes one or more URL and
the email is sent as "rich text" rather than "plain text". In Gmail,
at least, rich formatting can be easily toggled on and off when
composing an email.

Here's what the offending email looks like in the archive:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0709A&L=ADS-L&P=R607

There's a URL in there, and the hyperlink underlining suggests that
Barry may have inadvertently posted this in rich formatting.


--Ben Zimmer

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