Re: st: How to "format" Statalist posts

[Richard Williams <richardwilliams.ndu@gmail.com>]

At 06:04 PM 9/2/2013, Nick Cox wrote:
> The Statalist advice is that people do pay attention to the content
> and presentation of their posts. That's in their own best interests.
> For example, I recently deleted a post that was so badly presented
> that I doubted that a second reading would make clear what the poster
> had in mind.
>
> But what you refer to seems a product of what mailer you use. Yet I
> notice  that you use gmail, at least for Statalist, just as I do. That
> seems to produce reasonable line breaks in continuous prose without
> needing attention. I need to be more careful if presenting code, but
> otherwise I don't think gmail is problematic.
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com

Conversely, I notice that when I and others post using our iPads, it 
may look ok on my email programs but on the web paragraphs turn into 
one long line (at least with my browser). Here are two examples:

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2013-08/msg00074.html

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2013-09/msg00057.html

I also find that my messages sometimes bounce when using my iPad, and 
I don't really know why. My iPad is convenient but I suspect I should 
avoid it when posting to Statalist.

> On 2 September 2013 21:04, Nicole Boyle <nicboyle@gmail.com> wrote:
> > What is the correct way to "format" plain text posts to Statalist? I
> > notice that Statalist contributors that don't manually insert line
> > breaks (perhaps as demonstrated in this very sentence I'm writing now)
> > have text trailing horizontally into infinity. These posts, IMHO, are
> > not very reader-friendly.
> >
> > However, I've also tried to preemptively circumvent this issue by
> > inserting line breaks (via carriage return), but things often don't
> > work out quite like they should; line breaks occasionally seem to
> > appear in places I didn't put them, thereby introducing a different
> > type of reader-unfriendliness.
> >
> > Here's an example that may (or may not, since I won't know until this
> > is permanently posted) demonstrate this, using the previous paragraph:
> >
> > "However, I've also tried to preemptively circumvent this issue by
> > inserting line breaks via carriage return), <CARRIAGE RETURN>
> > but things often don't work out quite like they should; line breaks
> > occasionally seem to <CARRIAGE RETURN>
> > appear in places I didn't put them, thereby <CARRIAGE RETURN>
> > introducing a different type of reader-unfriendliness."
> >
> >
> > So, any tips on how to better post to Statalist?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Nicole

-------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
HOME:   (574)289-5227
EMAIL:  Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.Edu
WWW:    http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam

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