When
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
and
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
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 using
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
conventions. In essence the convention is to communicate in plain text format (not
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
) and quote with ">" at the beginning of each line, ">>" for a quote of quote, and so on. Most email clients can perform Usenet quoting automatically.
Examples
Usenet standard quoting refers to the practice of preceding the original message with the ">" (or right-angle
bracket) 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 well.
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:
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. Th
son-of-1036draft recommends "
>" as the quote-prefix
RFC 3676depends 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
*
Diple (textual symbol)
Diple ( grc, διπλῆ, meaning double, referring to the two lines in the mark >) was a mark used in the margins of ancient Greek manuscripts to draw attention to something in the text. It is sometimes also called antilambda because the sign r ...
*
Greater-than sign
The greater-than sign is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal-length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the right, , has been found in documents dated as far back as the ...
*
Nested quote
* Top-quoting and other
posting style
When a message is replied to in e-mail, Internet forums, or Usenet, the original can often be included, or "quoted", in a variety of different posting styles.
The main options are interleaved posting (also called inline replying, in which the di ...
s
Usenet
{{Internet-stub