I hardly ever quote entire posts. I quote the part I'm responding to. Posts can contain more than one point, and I'm keeping the ideas linear by quoting and responding to something specific. It's a courtesy to the reader, preventing them from having to sort through many extraneous lines of text to find the point that is being addressed. It also cleans up the visual appearance of the thread; how many times do we need to read the same post? The excerpt that I quote is sometimes just a cue as to which post I am responding to, maybe a slight reminder of what the content was, a representative part of a larger section. To me, it's all about keeping the thread clean, clear, and no longer than necessary. And, after all, the interested reader need only scroll up to read the whole post, if they are interested. In fact, now our quotes contain a link, so the complete text is only one click away!
My rules for quoting:
Quote:
|
Any complete sentence can be quoted as is. Want more? See the original post.
|
Quote:
|
..."snipped" sections are indicated by ellipsis... This prevents unnecessarily long re-posts.
|
Quote:
|
The quote can contain bold text, to help indicate what is specifiaclly being responding to.
|
The goal should be clear and concise quotes, to facilitate the exchange of ideas. For any ethical questions that may arise, we are on the honor system.