s-o-1036 June 1994

4.3.2. Body Conventions

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.

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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,

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     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

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     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.