I started writing articles on email in about 1997, at a time when email was a new concept
for most people. At the time, I had been using email on a daily basis for 15 years, and I
thought I had some input that people might find valuable.
That was nearly 20 years ago. Now email is more widespread, and it's clear that few people
have followed my advice. That's a pity: the mess that people have made of email makes it
almost useless for sensible communication. Upside-down messages are the norm, where the reply copies the entire original message
beneath the reply. The result is that probably 80% of all replies don't address the subject
of the original, certainly not if it contained more than one concept or is more than one
paragraph long. By comparison, the idea of writing paragraphs on a single line or writing
messages in HTML is only ugly.
In these pages I include my old information, which I'm no longer updating, but also a couple
of new thoughts. I still welcome feedback, but I'm no longer interested in ideas on how to
unbreak “Outlook” or similar.
Old pages
The main old page contains links to the others below.
