Can't speak for anybody else, but I top post so that those that have already
read the previous messages can easily see my response, it's right there at
the top. For those that need to be brought up to speed, (generally a
minority), they can scroll down to read the previous messages, which are
included intact (usually) so they can see everything in each message in it's
proper context.

What amazes me is how bent out of shape some people get over top-posting.
It's a matter of preference, what you like vs. what I like. Just like the
people who can't/won't use proper, grammatically correct English (I'm
speaking of those with English as their native language here), including
proper capitalization and punctuation. It annoys me to read these posts,
but I'm not going to make a big flaming war out of it. I don't insist on
perfection from others, as I'm not perfect myself. Nor do I expect others
to conform to my personal standards.

It just isn't that big a deal.

M

"James Robinson" wrote in message
...
ShawnD2112 wrote:

I've never understood why top posting is seen as such an evil thing.
What am I missing?

Two reasons:

One, as a thread progresses, a mix of top and bottom posting becomes
confusing when someone wants to look back through the quoted material.
Since most posters to newsgroups bottom post, that is the de facto
standard method. Email users typically top post, so that becomes the
standard for email.

Two, top posters often quote the entire text below their reply without
editing it. That makes the replies longer than they need to be. You
often see a one line "me too" post, followed by several hundred lines of
quote. Bottom posters seem to be more into the habit of quoting only
what is necessary to retain continuity, so it keeps the length of the
posts under control.