Re: Reading e-mail.

I think my only conclusion in my earlier post is that context is
near-necessary in human intercourse. How that context is achieved
is largely a matter of circumstances including time, conventions/culture,
and available tools.

Having said that, I think a reality of online communications is
that quoting in e-mail and other online discussion is something
that is here and not going away anytime soon, regardless of whether
it is the best way to provide the necessary context.

In an ideal world, I might be able to restate every point to which
I am responding, but I must confess that I often do not have the
time to do so and that the original words are often 'good enough'.

Personally, I prefer to show implicit understanding of what I am
referencing by using the information I have gleaned from reading
the original message(s) to continue the discussion. If I do not
understand something, I say so, and if my understanding is flawed,
it will come up and be corrected. Instead of reiteration (or
interpretation), I synthesize new ideas from the source material
or evaluate the source material.

I'll avoid the Latin phrase, but while repetition is the mother
of study, I think it is how one does the repetition that is the
key to learning. One does not learn Latin (or Perl) just by
repeating words and phrases, one learns it by trying to use it
to say things or do things.

In the world of hardcopy print, there are footnotes or references
to provide verbatim quotes to backup otherwise paraphrased or
interpreted source material. That is not something that is currently
present in the way people currently communicate in email.

The reason people in the old days did not cut up letters and glue
them back into ongoing mail is that it was a pain in the neck to
do so. Nowadays, we can. Should we? I don't know. But I do know
that it is not something that is going away anytime soon, so I am
interested in ways to make quoting as useful a means as possible to
provide context on email and other similar online discussion mediums.

--Jon

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Received on Sat Nov 18 2006 - 11:06:16 PST