top-posting

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

I prefer to find out what the person WHO ACTUALLY SENT THE MESSAGE had to say
before I read a bunch of stuff that I have already read. This seems to me
particularly important on a list such as this one, 90% of which is crap or inane
(e.g., "I agree"). I can usually tell from the subject line what the subject
is (though I admit that a lot of these postings wander far afield from what the
subject line says--is THAT rude or what?).

In the end, though, this is surely just a matter of taste, and convenience
(not GOOD or EVIL). In my case, I often check my messages on a blackberry, and
scrolling down is not convenient. It is nice to be able to delete 50% of all
messages after merely reading the first line.

In a message dated 3/12/09 4:36:54 PM, thnidu at GMAIL.COM writes:


> On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 06:55:36PM +0000, ronbutters at AOL.COM wrote:
> > > Yup. Multiple negation of emphasis, not the prescriptivist's multneg.
> (And aren't you glad you don't have to scroll all the way down just to read
> "Yup"?
> >
> > Quite to the contrary, I had to scroll all the way down to
> > learn what statement your "Yup" was agreeing with.
> >
> > So I had to read your response first, then the original
> > statement it answered, and then your response again to
> > understand it in context.
>
> Pree-zackly (Pogo, IIRC). Top-posting often assumes that the reader
> has the context in mind, which is much less likely on a list like this
> than in a two- or three-person exchange by email.
>
> mam
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>




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