Son-of-RFC1036:[Previous][Up to Table of Contents] [Next]
Although body lines can in principle be very long (see sec-
tion 4.6 for some discussion of length limits), posters
SHOULD restrict body line lengths to circa 70-75 characters.
On systems where text is conventionally stored with EOLs
only at paragraph breaks and other "hard return" points,
with software breaking lines as appropriate for display or
manipulation, posting agents SHOULD insert EOLs as necessary
so that posted articles comply with this restriction.
NOTE: News originated in environments where line
breaks in plain text files were supplied by the
user, not the software. Be this good or bad, much
reading-agent and posting-agent software assumes
that news articles follow this convention, so it
is often inconvenient to read or respond to arti-
cles which violate it. The "70-75" number comes
from the widespread use of display devices which
are 80 columns wide, and the desire to leave a bit
of margin for quoting etc. (see below).
Reading agents confronted with body lines much longer than
the available output-device width SHOULD break lines as
appropriate. Posters are warned that such breaks may not
occur exactly where the poster intends.
NOTE: "As appropriate" would typically include
breaking lines when supplying the text of an arti-
cle to be quoted in a reply or followup, something
that line-breaking reading agents often neglect to
do now.
Although styles vary widely, for plain text it is usual to
use no left margin, leave the right edge ragged, use a sin-
gle empty line to separate paragraphs, and employ normal
natural-language usage on matters such as upper/lowercase.
(In particular, articles SHOULD not be written entirely in
uppercase. In environments where posters have access only
to uppercase, posting agents SHOULD translate it to lower-
case.)
NOTE: Most people find substantial bodies of text
entirely in uppercase relatively hard to read,
while all-lowercase text merely looks slightly
odd. The common association of uppercase with
strong emphasis adds to this.
Tone of voice does not carry well in written text, and mis-
understandings are common when sarcasm, parody, or exaggera-
tion for humorous effect is attempted without explicit warn-
ing. It has become conventional to use the sequence ":-)",
which (on most output devices) resembles a rotated "smiley
face" symbol, as a marker for text not meant to be taken
literally, especially when humor is intended. This practice
aids communication and averts unintended ill-will; posters
are urged to use it. A variety of analogous sequences are
used with less-standardized meanings [Sanderson].
The order of arrival of news articles at a particular host
depends somewhat on transmission paths, and occasionally
articles are lost for various reasons. When responding to a
previous article, posters SHOULD not assume that all readers
understand the exact context. It is common to quote some of
the previous article to establish context. This SHOULD be
done by prefacing each quoted line (even if it is empty)
with the character ">". This will result in multiple levels
of ">" when quoted context itself contains quoted context.
NOTE: It may seem superfluous to put a prefix on
empty lines, but it simplifies implementation of
functions such as "skip all quoted text" in read-
ing agents.
Readability is enhanced if quoted text and new text are sep-
arated by an empty line.
Posters SHOULD edit quoted context to trim it down to the
minimum necessary. However, posting agents SHOULD not
attempt to enforce this by imposing overly-simplistic rules
like "no more than 50% of the lines should be quotes".
NOTE: While encouraging trimming is desirable, the
50% rule imposed by some old posting agents is
both inadequate and counterproductive. Posters do
not respond to it by being more selective about
quoting; they respond by padding short responses,
or by using different quoting styles to defeat
automatic analysis. The former adds unnecessary
noise and volume, while the latter also defeats
more useful forms of automatic analysis that read-
ing agents might wish to do.
NOTE: At the very least, if a minimum-unquoted
quota is being set, article bodies shorter than
(say) 20 lines, or perhaps articles which exceed
the quota by only a few lines, should be exempt.
This avoids the ridiculous situation of complain-
ing about a 5-line response to a 6-line quote.
NOTE: A more subtle posting-agent rule, suggested
for experimental use, is to reject articles that
appear to contain quoted signatures (see below).
This is almost certainly the result of a careless
poster not bothering to trim down quoted context.
Also, if a posting agent or followup agent pre-
sents an article template to the poster for edit-
ing, it really should take note of whether the
poster actually made any changes, and refrain from
posting an unmodified template.
Some followup agents supply "attribution" lines for quoted
context, indicating where it first appeared and under whose
name. When multiple levels of quoting are present and
quoted context is edited for brevity, "inner" attribution
lines are not always retained. The editing process is also
somewhat error-prone. Reading agents (and readers) are
warned not to assume that attributions are accurate.
UNRESOLVED ISSUE: Should a standard format for
attribution lines be defined? There is already
considerable diversity... but automatic news anal-
ysis would be substantially aided by a standard
convention.
Early difficulties in inferring return addresses from arti-
cle headers led to "signatures": short closing texts, auto-
matically added to the end of articles by posting agents,
identifying the poster and giving his network addresses etc.
If a poster or posting agent does append a signature to an
article, the signature SHOULD be preceded with a delimiter
line containing (only) two hyphens (ASCII 45) followed by
one blank (ASCII 32). Posting agents SHOULD limit the
length of signatures, since verbose excess bordering on
abuse is common if no restraint is imposed; 4 lines is a
common limit.
NOTE: While signatures are arguably a blemish,
they are a well-understood convention, and convey-
ing the same information in headers exposes it to
mangling and makes it rather less conspicuous. A
standard delimiter line makes it possible for
reading agents to handle signatures specially if
desired. (This is unfortunately hampered by
extensive misunderstanding of, and misuse of, the
delimiter.)
NOTE: The choice of delimiter is somewhat unfortu-
nate, since it relies on preservation of trailing
white space, but it is too well-established to
change. There is work underway to define a more
sophisticated signature scheme as part of MIME,
and this will presumably supersede the current
convention in due time.
NOTE: Four 75-column lines of signature text is
300 characters, which is ample to convey name and
mail-address information in all but the most
bizarre situations.