Friends,
At the risk of sounding like a monomaniac on this topic, may I request that you trim the
tails of prior posts so that you reply to the specific material that occasions your
response?
It makes the list ever so much more readable -- especially for those who subscribe in
daily digest format, as I do.
This kind of thing takes just a minute.
Let me give you an example where it makes a big difference. The proposal to use list
conversations as the basis of a book or anthology requires format work before text
editing can begin. I know, since I have collated and formatted some on-line debates for
different purposes. Tracing threads, and sorting through the format problems to get a
readable Word document takes significant work -- hours for a small thread, several days
for a thread that lasts weeks or months. This involved no text editing at all -- just getting
the document clean and readable.
Editing comes next -- and the work involved against the yield will be quite discouraging if
anyone begins to cost out the time involved. As interesting as the proposal is, one can
say ... look, this is just a list so I can post without worrying about every detail in the
quality of my prose. Fair enough ... but it takes little work to use a clean format.
Managing format issues for a readable list makes a difference here. It becomes vital if
we hope to use list posts for other purposes.
Please trim your replies to respond to the material that you focus on and delete the rest.
It takes a few minutes for the poster and saves a great deal of time for the readers.
Thank you.
Ken
|