For the first time, I scrolled down a message in the messaging system to read earlier messages. It was unreadable. Here's part of it:
> > > > > > On 1/30/2018, 12:26:27 PM Switch Blayde said:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > btw, I didn't congratulate you before. You've
> > > accomplished
> > > > > what
> > > > > > > most self-piubbed authors don't. Congratulations. I
> > spend
> > > a
> > > > > lot
Why all the greater than signs? It's almost impossible to read.
Why all the greater than signs? It's almost impossible to read.
Every time a message is replied to, a "> " is added to indicate it is quoted text and the line length is shortened to a specific length.
ETA: Unfortunately, it doesn't check to see if there is already a ">".
Generally when I post a reply, I rejoin split lines and remove any extra >'s. That was something I got in the habit of doing back in the BBS/FidoNet days. Another thing I do is delete older quoted text. If you've been replying using the original message, you end up with a copy of the entire exchange in your message. Unless there is a reason to keep the entire conversation in a single message, all it does is waste space.
Every time a message is replied to, a "> " is added to indicate it is quoted text and the line length is shortened to a specific length.
I expected that. But I expected each message in the chain to have a consistent number of >s and the sentences not be broken into words.
In the part I posted, it started out fine with 6 >s for the first two lines.
But the next line had 7 >s (expected 6). And then it really got bad.
The next line only had 3 >s (expected 6) and, worse, only one word.
The next had 5 >s (instead of 6) and also only one word.
The next line had a full sentence, but 7 >s (instead of 6).
Then it went to only 2 >s with only one word.
And so on.
I expected each line in this entire message to be preceded with 6 >s and full sentences.
Why all the greater than signs? It's almost impossible to read.
In a back-and-forth conversation, this will happen when nobody removes any quoted text. Each time a message is replied to, the system wraps the text and adds a > to each line to increase the quote level.
The auto-quote is designed to help the conversation, but you're not supposed to leave all the text in there.
I'm old school, where we interspersed the quoted text with our replies and only kept the quoted text we're actually replying to. I hate the Microsoft-style quote where everybody replies on top.
The issue is, as explained the adding of > marks combined with a set number of characters in a line length with a full word wrap around. In the example you have I'd say, from the > marks, the original had two lines of text with some replies, then the line length hit the max and the word 'what' got moved to a new line on the same reply as the word 'lot.' A few replies later the words 'accomplished' and 'a' got wrapped to new lines followed by a wrap of the word 'spend' on the next reply.
As has been said, the only way to avoid it happening is to manually remove the > marks or to limit how much you quote in the reply, or to just ignore it.