Start my reply before the quote
As a follow up to my USC email post, not that to keep things consistent, it’s necessary to change Thunderbird’s default setting under Account Settings -> Composition & Addressing. Instead of start my reply below the quote, choose start my reply above the quote. This is consistent with Gmail and USC’s web-based email client.
This is a bad policy.
“Good. No, the answer is an orange and two lemons.”
“Lemons?”
“If I have three lemons and three oranges and I lose two oranges and a lemon, what do I have left?”
“Huh?”
“Okay, so you think that time flows that way, do you?”
-Mostly Harmless
You’ll often see comments online from uninformed Usenet kiddies who think “top posting” is evil and wage a religious war against it. Pay them no mind.
Although it’s preferred to interleave quotes on Usenet and “trim” all extraneous material (which is already accessible from the rest of the thread), “top posting” with a running full copy of the previous thread is actually the de facto standard for email, so “start my reply above the quote” should be the default for email accounts.