_ _ _ _ wrote:

Friends, I continue to enjoy and appreciate many of the postings and the discussions. I’m just wondering, though, whether someone can explain why we have so many postings that repeat the previous comments and the ones before that and the ones before that … I find I am scrolling through the same stuff over and over.

I’m really dumb in this IT area and don’t know whether there is some way to filter this out. If someone could advise us all, it will save time and computer memory and also help us to find the next gem of wisdom …

Another replied:

_ _ _ _ makes a good point.

Sometimes it is helpful to have the part of an earlier posting that you are addressing, but most of the time it is wasteful of reading time, file storage space on your disk, computer speed, downloading speed, Internet bandwidth, and communications costs, not to mention paper, ink, time and printer wear if you print it.

The solution is easy for those who don’t know how yet. When you hit reply and the new email comes up with the old material in it, scroll down and mark what you don’t want and delete it.

The worst culprits for this are those who forward emails (not in this group) which have perhaps 100s of email addresses listed in the text because the originator didn’t use blind copy. Then these get forwarded to others and eventually every spammer on the web has all of those email addresses. If you receive one like this please delete the addresses and consider mentioning it to the writer of the email. And remember, often the Reply button might be more appropriate than the Reply All.

There, now I feel better. Looking forward to some short and punchy emails.