Re: plaintext email?

[Brian Kantor <Brian () ampr org>]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 12:12:34PM -0500, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> Isn't the underlying assumption with non-plaintext that: "I know what will
> work better for you than you do"

I suspect that the increasing use of very long lines in the expectation
that the recipient's mail client will wrap them "appropriately"
leads to mail clients reformatting and wrapping lines in complete
disregard for the formatting that the sender used.

For example, the previous paragraph was sent consisting of four
lines.  If it didn't display that way for you, your mail client
may have reformatted it.  Had I wanted to use the formatting to
convey some information, that would have been lost.

A quote from many years ago that I feel is still relevant:

"Good spelling, punctuation, and formatting are essentially the on-line
equivalent of bathing."   -- Elf Sternberg

        - Brian