Usenet quoting
Encyclopedia
When Usenet
and e-mail
users respond to a message, they often want to include some context for the discussion. This is often accomplished by quoting a portion of the original message.
) character at the beginning of each line, and then inserting one's responses inline, using no special designator for the author's messages.
When a second response is made to the second message, the second message is
again quoting with >, perhaps causing parts of the original message to now be designated with >>. Such nested quotations can technically be continued indefinitely, but quickly become cumbersome.
Enhanced quoting (such as facilitating by the Emacs
supercite module), includes more context by using the initials or a short form of the name. The
program has to be careful not to quote already quoted material:
It is often the case that it makes sense, particularly in the simple quoting case,
to insert a note telling who said what:
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
and e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
users respond to a message, they often want to include some context for the discussion. This is often accomplished by quoting a portion of the original message.
Examples
Usenet standard quoting refers to the practice of preceding the original message with the ">" (or right-angle bracketBracket
Brackets are tall punctuation marks used in matched pairs within text, to set apart or interject other text. In the United States, "bracket" usually refers specifically to the "square" or "box" type.-List of types:...
) character at the beginning of each line, and then inserting one's responses inline, using no special designator for the author's messages.
> hello, how are you?
I am fine
When a second response is made to the second message, the second message is
again quoting with >, perhaps causing parts of the original message to now be designated with >>. Such nested quotations can technically be continued indefinitely, but quickly become cumbersome.
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
Enhanced quoting (such as facilitating by the Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
supercite module), includes more context by using the initials or a short form of the name. The
program has to be careful not to quote already quoted material:
first> hello, how are you?
I am fine.
first> hello, how are you?
second> I am fine.
Good, I am also fine.
It is often the case that it makes sense, particularly in the simple quoting case,
to insert a note telling who said what:
Last Saturday, when the sun was nice, Second Guy said:
> Last thursday, while eating popcorn, First Guy said:
>> hello, how are you?
> I am fine
Good, I am also fine.
Canonical quoting
There is no standard declaring one way of quoting to be "right" and others to be "wrong", but some standards depend on conventions. The son-of-1036 draft recommends ">" as the quote-prefix; RFC 3676 depends on it and considers ">> " and "> > " to be semantically different. That is, ">> " has a quote-depth of two, while "> > " has a quote-depth of one, quoting a line starting with ">". For these reasons, ">" is often considered the "canonical" quote-prefix.See also
- Top-quoting and other posting styles
- Diple (textual symbol)Diple (textual symbol)Diple was used in margins to draw attention to something in text. It is sometimes also called antilambda because the sign resembles a Greek capital letter lambda turned upon its side...
- nested quoteNested quoteA nested quotation is a quotation that is encapsulated inside another quotation, forming a hierarchy with multiple levels. When focusing on a certain quotation, one must interpret it within its scope. Nested quotation can be used in literature , speech, and computer science...