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Hi all,

With a recent spate of people hitting the "Quote" button rather than "Reply" to respond to a forum posting, I wanted to put this thread together to try and avoid forum threads getting unnecessarily bulky in text and length. There's nothing wrong with quoting messages, but at the same time, we're all capable of reading the message that precedes yours to understand what it is that you are replying to. In this instance, there's absolutely no need to quote the entire message that appeared just before yours.

Quoting is a good way to highlight small aspects of a post that you want to respond to. If there's a lengthy post and there are some aspects (but not all) that you want to comment on....or if the post you want to discuss appears earlier on in the thread, then quoting is an ideal way to help people appreciate the specific comment you are replying to.

Quoting is also an ideal way to place a small quote from a different site or thread into the middle of a conversation. I'm going to do that now, by reminding you that the forum guidelines state.... http://www.nzmac.com/forum-rules-and-guidelines.html
We ask that all users who quote small segments of articles from other sites include a direct URL to the article on the original site where it was displayed. If the complete copy of a web article is posted into the forum, it will generally be removed.You'll note here that I've not only referenced where the text came from, but also only included a small part of the text from the page that I referenced.

Believe it or not, I do get emails from people complaining about the quoting of an entire previous post, so please try and consider other people and have faith in their ability to read web pages...particularly the post just before yours.

In the following posts, you'll see me provide some good and bad examples of quoting....although quoting yourself (as I do in the examples) also isn't that necessary!

Cheers,

Phil

Philip Roy wrote:
Hi all,

With a recent spate of people hitting the "Quote" button rather than "Reply" to respond to a forum posting, I wanted to put this thread together to try and avoid forum threads getting unnecessarily bulky in text and length. There's nothing wrong with quoting messages, but at the same time, we're all capable of reading the message that precedes yours to understand what it is that you are replying to. In this instance, there's absolutely no need to quote the entire message that appeared just before yours.

Quoting is a good way to highlight small aspects of a post that you want to respond to. If there's a lengthy post and there are some aspects (but not all) that you want to comment on....or if the post you want to discuss appears earlier on in the thread, then quoting is an ideal way to help people appreciate the specific comment you are replying to.

Quoting is also an ideal way to place a small quote from a different site or thread into the middle of a conversation. I'm going to do that now, by reminding you that the forum guidelines state.... http://www.nzmac.com/forum-rules-and-guidelines.html
We ask that all users who quote small segments of articles from other sites include a direct URL to the article on the original site where it was displayed. If the complete copy of a web article is posted into the forum, it will generally be removed.You'll note here that I've not only referenced where the text came from, but also only included a small part of the text from the page that I referenced.

Believe it or not, I do get emails from people complaining about the quoting of an entire previous post, so please try and consider other people and have faith in their ability to read web pages...particularly the post just before yours.

In the following posts, you'll see me provide some good and bad examples of quoting....although quoting yourself (as I do in the examples) also isn't that necessary!

Cheers,

PhilSo this is a really bad example. The post I have quoted in its entirety is right above this post. There's absolutely no need for me to quote it, simply to respond to it as people can see the post already.

Phil

Philip Roy wrote:
Quoting is a good way to highlight small aspects of a postYes, I agree...and this is a great way of showing how to use a small quote

Philip Roy wrote:
There's nothing wrong with quoting messagesAnd with a bit of practice, you can include a few small quotes to help support your arguments, comments or advice.

Phil

Philip Roy wrote:
So this is a really bad example.Gosh...it was a bad example....and note that even though the post I'm quoting is two posts back, there's still no need to quote the entire post just so people know who you are responding to. A simple snippet of the post will do.

Hope that helps.

Phil