We individuals could solve this problem quickly.  If you are about to reply to a posting and you see that it has a lot of &quot;baggage,&quot; delete everything except the message to which you are responding.  Takes five seconds, and saves the rest of us from having to scroll through endless lines of repetition or gibberish to get to other responses.  Here&#39;s how (if you don&#39;t already know):<br>
<ul><li>Put your mouse cursor to the immediate left of the first word to be deleted.</li><li>Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to the right (or down and right).</li><li>When you see some characters become highlighted, release the left button.</li>
<li>Using your mouse, drag the slider (aka elevator bar) on the right side of the message window down until you can see the end of the stuff to be deleted.</li><li>Move the mouse cursor to the right of the last word to be deleted.</li>
<li>Hold down the Shift key and click the left button.  Everything between where you started and where you are now will be highlighted.<br></li><li>Hit the delete key.</li></ul>HTH,<br>John<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 11:56 PM, Paul T. Wilson <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:[log in to unmask]"><a href="/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?LOGON=A3%3Dind0906%26L%3DATEG%26E%3Dquoted-printable%26P%3D4698981%26B%3D--0016364c7c07a549e8046b71ce60%26T%3Dtext%252Fhtml%3B%2520charset%3Dwindows-1252%26pending%3D" target="_parent" >[log in to unmask]</a></a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi Scott,<br>
<br>
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&#39;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.<br>
<font color="#888888">
<br>
Paul</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
Scott wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
The result of old-fashioned diagramming&#39;s being ingrained in me gives<br>
<br>
me the subject and verb immediately.<br>
<br>
Scott Catledge<br>
<br>
I deleted the 120 pages in this Special issue. Is everyone getting that<br>
<br>
much garbage. Some messages are clear; most are contained in gibberish.<br>
<br>
I am not referring to anyone’s expression as ‘gibberish’—just the printed<br>
<br>
results.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list&#39;s web interface at:<br>
    <a href="http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html" target="_blank">http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html</a><br>
and select &quot;Join or leave the list&quot;<br>
<br>
Visit ATEG&#39;s web site at <a href="http://ateg.org/" target="_blank">http://ateg.org/</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
<p>
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/