Hi Scott,

When people reply to digests, intending to speak only to one message 
therein but without deleting the rest, and then others chime in, the 
total length can get excessive. Two such messages recently were 1.7 and 
2.3 megabytes, with plenty of unreadable character strings. This is 
because some email programs translate perfectly from other programs, 
while others fail to digest properly, and what they pass on can be hard 
to swallow. Slightly more technically, when prose is transformed into 
machine language, the obscure result is very long, certainly not a 
reader's digest. Though this is a very high volume list, there is no 
consistent tradition of editing digests down to exclude all but the most 
relevant text, but that would be the only real solution.

Paul


Scott wrote:
>
> The result of old-fashioned diagramming's being ingrained in me gives
>
> me the subject and verb immediately.
>
> Scott Catledge
>
> I deleted the 120 pages in this Special issue. Is everyone getting that
>
> much garbage. Some messages are clear; most are contained in gibberish.
>
> I am not referring to anyone’s expression as ‘gibberish’—just the printed
>
> results.
>

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