Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

title says it all.

> in original email text spoils all communication and if using professionally, makes an email reply look very amateur

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

You're probably sending email incorrectly believing it to look professional and are unaware that it's not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

It's a matter of opinion. I think I'll wait for some constructive replies.

All desktop email clients give options of how you want to denote original text (indent, >, nothing, font etc). N900 does not offer this option.

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

Modest is modest (works for me though), however I've heard there's a way to run Thunderbird (but my memory might be failing, look for it) so knock yourself out.

Anyway, those that (I know and) have been using email since early nineties generally agree that the good (aka "professional" quoting style is to quote (only the) relevant parts with ">" (using multiple levels as required) and replying under the quote. Quoting the whole mail (which then becomes quote of the whole thread) is inexcusably morose (if you mail client doesn't handle threading and you yourself can't keep track of the threads then fix either one of these problems). I in fact don't remember anymore what the preferred quoting style was back in the dial-in BBS days but I would not be surprised if it was the same.

I know GMail sorta abuses (or put it more nicely: makes the best it can out of) the fact that the hoi polloi use Outlook which encourages sloppy quoting (and then since "one Microsoft way" is "de facto standard" and thus must be great world + dog has joined this madness).

Edit: I would also like to state that HTML formatted emails are "teh suxx0r" (just as morose as lolspeak), and using HTML formatted mails where you put your replies between quotes (that are not actually quotes in any of the ways that the email client could understand them as such) in different color will drive people to silently hate you.

I will get off my soapbox now...

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

Thanks, Rambo. I'll keep my eye out for another apps that might help.

I think it's all about options. In not offering options on how I wish to reply to email, Modest is doing a (in your words) Microsoft "de facto standard" and prescribes how it thinks it shoud work, instead of describing how users wish to have it work.

I use my N900 for work, and my company has policies on email replies. Its policy is to be able to use original text to clearly research before formulating your new reply. Adding > makes emails look messy and awkward for small-screen users (Blackberry etc).

I can see that I made a mistake asking this quesiton here, as the replies aren't about function, rather opinion.

Thanks for all your replies though.

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

You're wrong, rambo wrote about the function:
Or in other words: You can't remove it.

how to replies?
 

i'm sorry if i made a new topic...
how to reply to daily digest from yahoogroups? i want to reply to one topic only not to all topic. thank you

Re: Can " > " be removed from email replies?
 

That's absolutely not the same thing at all. Modest is doing what practically every other email clients, since god knows when, have been doing. Whereas MS is doing its own *****ic thing and because of the sheer weight of numbers of ignorant and illiterate users of MS software it becomes a de facto "standard".

Having choice where it makes sense is good. In this case allowing the user to choose the quoting character and then having to program email clients to analyse and guess which character is being used is not good - just as it is not good to let drivers choose on which of the road they would like to drive.

Not really about opinion, just explaining why things are the way they are. Only opinion being expressed is that sticking to widely implemented (by lots of different people) standards is a good thing.

EDIT: for those enquiring minds, the censored bit is M*O*R*O*N*I*C