Be Excellent To Each Other

Or, indeed, "Sent from my HTC / Nokia / Whatever".

People that leave this message on their emails - are they dicks saying 'look at my shiny phone' or simply letting people know that their spelling may not be up to par?

Or, 'can't be bothered deleting it'?

You can switch it off.

It's never bothered me. It does on business emails though. Also on forum posts.

Kalmar.

I switched it off on my phone. I don't really give a damn what someone sent an email from.

Edit: I'd certainly prefer "Sent from my mobile" than "Sent from my X branded device". I suppose sending from a mobile might explain brevity.

I didn't know you can switch it off, but it hasn't ever really bothered me too much.

Or "'I'm not in the office so don't expect me to be able to review a contract for you".

There's no need to leave it on a business email. That's just showing off.


Posted from my HTC... rooted... running Froyo 2.2

Can be both. The latter is a valid reason to leave it there I think -- a one-line email reply that might otherwise seem a little standoffish is less likely to irritate if it has the "I'm mobile" tag. Probably more important on business emails than personal ones.

I leave it on.
It's showing off. I'm a dick.

Although I find it slightly dickish, I leave it on on my Blackberry as an implied, 'no I haven't looked at your 1000 page attached excel spreadsheet/powerpoint presentation'

Mine is turned on not because I'm a douche but I'd like people to knowable mistakes are the phone's fault and Gaywood's reason - the snappy reply one!

Edit: see?! Knowable? The fuck?

I changed mine almost immediately to 'sent from a mobile device', for the reasons Kissyfur and markh have already touched upon.

When I say almost immediately, I mean when I first noticed that it actually did that. It's annoying, and it looks unprofessional on business email.

'Sent from my iPod' is the best.

I switched mine off on my iPhone as I thought it was smug. I rarely (i.e. almost never) get sent lengthy emails requiring well thought out and/or lengthy responses. What I find more irksome is the top posting nature of email responses from mobile devices and it's a real faff altering this.

Indeed, part of why I think it's quite useful in a business context but not a personal one.

Oh god yes. Even I top-post from the iPhone and iPad.

Top posting is correct for emails, I feel.
And PMs. Oddly.

I agree.

I'm the only person in my office who doesn't top-post when replying to e-mails in Outlook.

This enrages me.

WTF is "top posting"?

Hoo boy.

Jesus Christ, even I have accepted that battle is lost.

Not as much as you enrage everyone else by doing it backward.

It doesn't really work on forums.

Bloody nerds and their secret languages. It's like those people who learn Klingon or Elvish.

Actually, it works quite nicely for quotes. You can tell the forum to flip the order on posts, too.

Why?

Why what?

Why "top post", and what does that mean in the context of emails?

We've been giving you clues, man!

It depends on the length of the email and the response required I think. If there are several points that need addressing then nesting the responses is the correct thing to do.

Everybody is in the same boat, Lewie. None of us really know "why". Some say it's complete luck and circumstance that we've evolved this far. Some think God put us here and gave us free will. Some think "42". Plato thought it was about achieving the highest possible form of knowledge. It really is personal taste. I guess we'll never know.

Hoch HoS Daq chaH

All mighty against them?

I thought it was "all power to them" but then again maybe this universal translator is broken.

WAIT A SECOND! How did the universal translator know when to translate stuff and when not to?

I don't see the problem with top posting as long as you're only replying to one point. If the quoted section is a reply to the person who sent you the initial email, they don't need to reread what they wrote to you, do they?

TBH if you are mobile and working from a blackberry or other, just reply to your client that you are travelling and will attend to their enquiry when you return to your office.

Thats formal, doesnt rely on some kinda "sent from my backberry so excuse my shit reply", and gives you a good excuse for having not looked at their 100 page document yet.

Thats what I do anyway.
Preferable to sending a shitty 1 line, badly written email.

Or use out of office if you are in meetings or on a train/flight etc and dont want to be disturbed. maybe thats too obvious.

Clients often ignore those, in my experience, because they think they're important..

Top posting is a nightmare. It's a dead convention, stop doing it!

Gaywood, I'm looking at you.

Gmail hides quoted text anyway. What's the problem?

A problem I have is when MrsA sends me an email, and as I'm replying to that one, sends another about something else, so then we end up with two email conversations going on about different things at the same time and it gets confusing.

Hellish.

Say you're in a gmail conversation with several people (possibly mafiascum related, although I realise there are better ways to do it). Gmail conveniently groups everything together into one email, so you don't have pages of new emails if you haven't had the chance to check it for a while. You click on this email and it opens to the latest one, with all the quotes hidden (unread and otherwise), so I read and respond, not realising I've missed half the conversation. That's the problem.

Wasn't google wave supposed to fix this shit?

People keep top-posting replies to me on Twitter. Dicks.

Given people rarely seem to be bothered to trim lengthy email conversations down, I don't want to scroll all the way to the bottom to see what you've said, so I don't care about top-posting. If it's a point-by-point reply, as people have mentioned, nested responses are the way to go, but you shouldn't be sending me emails with several nested replies of history anyway for top-posting to bother me.

‘Sent from my iPhone’ I switched off immediately, as I thought it'd make me sound like a dick. I hate people using brands when a generic product type could do; ‘I'll just check my phone’ vs. ‘I'll just check my iPhone’ sounds like a right twat.

They need to learn that they arent...

See also, calling on weekends, out of office hours etc. LOLz.

Setting customer expectations early is one of the best things to avoid headaches in the future.
Then again, I work in scientific applications support and not law.

LOL

HAHAHAHAHAHAH.


yeah, exactly.

Fuck 'em, it's those people that are responsible for me getting e-mails that, if I printed them out, would take up 20 pages of A4 with all the shit left at the bottom that they don't trim out.

I'm helping the environment, man!