| From: | "J.D. Falk" <jdfalk@************.org> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | ADMIN: Message formatting |
| Date: | Sat, 6 Jan 1996 03:26:08 -0500 (EST) |
not to join the debate about 80 columns, pressing enter to seperate
ideas, and other niceties of message formatting, here's a few excerpts
from RFC 1855, which is titled "Netiquette Guidelines."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
- Use mixed case. UPPER CASE LOOKS AS IF YOU'RE SHOUTING.
- Use symbols for emphasis. That *is* what I meant. Use
underscores for underlining. _War and Peace_ is my favorite
book.
- Use smileys to indicate tone of voice, but use them sparingly.
:-) is an example of a smiley (Look sideways). Don't assume
that the inclusion of a smiley will make the recipient happy
with what you say or wipe out an otherwise insulting comment.
- Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in
messages unless they are MIME attachments or unless your mailer
encodes these. If you send encoded messages make sure the
recipient can decode them.
- Be brief without being overly terse. When replying to a message,
include enough original material to be understood but no more. It
is extremely bad form to simply reply to a message by including
all the previous message: edit out all the irrelevant material.
- Limit line length to fewer than 65 characters and end a line
with a carriage return.
- Mail should have a subject heading which reflects
the content of the message.
- If you include a signature keep it short. Rule of thumb
is no longer than 4 lines. Remember that many people pay for
connectivity by the minute, and the longer your message is,
the more they pay.
- Messages and articles should be brief and to the point. Don't
wander off-topic, don't ramble and don't send mail or post
messages solely to point out other people's errors in typing
or spelling. These, more than any other behavior, mark you
as an immature beginner.
- Subject lines should follow the conventions of the group.
- If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!
- Avoid sending messages or posting articles which are no more than
gratuitous replies to replies.
- Be careful with monospacing fonts and diagrams. These will
display differently on different systems, and with different
mailers on the same system.
- Don't send large files to mailing lists when Uniform
Resource Locators (URLs) or pointers to ftp-able versions
will do. If you want to send it as multiple files, be
sure to follow the culture of the group. If you don't
know what that is, ask.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The entire document is avaliable in HTML at:
http://www.cybernothing.org/cno/docs/rfc1855.html
Or, send me an e-mail message with a Subject: header of "gimme
rfc1855.txt" (nothing else, no quotes, body will be ignored.) That's the
only RFC I've got in there right now, though -- you can find all the rest
via ftp, gopher, or the web at rs.internic.net.
-------------========== J.D. Falk <jdfalk@****.com> =========-------------
| Assistant Listowner, ShadowRN, NERPS, ShadowTK, and Plot-D |
| (Please enjoy this Admin-after-DEATH experience) |
--------========== http://www.cais.com/jdfalk/home.html ==========--------
