Comb quoting

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Kammquoting occurs when the text in an email or a Usenet -contribution with additional quote characters so wrap is that the last word each ends up in a new line.

Is meant: Comb quoting: 
Hansli schrieb:
> Hallo Leute, ich habe eine Frage an euch:
> Was bedeutet der Begriff Kammquoting?

Hallo Hansli
...

Hansli schrieb:
> Hallo Leute, ich habe eine Frage an
euch:
> Was bedeutet der Begriff
Kammquoting?

Hallo Hansli
...

The term comb quoting arose from the similarity of the alternating long and short lines with a comb .

In the past, common terminals could only display 80 characters per line. Therefore, in the mailbox networks and in Usenet, the convention has become established to take this limit into account:

New text should therefore be written with a maximum width of 78 characters per line (see RFC 5322 ). This leaves enough space to mark the text as a quote by placing a ">" in front of it in answers. However, this procedure requires special support in news readers: The text entered by the user must be broken much earlier than the quoted text.

There are programs (such as Microsoft Outlook Express ) that break quoted text when creating a reply article in the same place as normal text, instead of only breaking it when it reaches 80 characters on a line. As a result, individual words in the quoted text suddenly appear in their own line without the quotation mark, and it is no longer possible to identify who wrote what.

Web links

  • RFC 5322 - Internet Message Format
  • RFC 3676 - The Text / Plain Format and DelSp Parameters
  • "Format = Flowed" - functionality, pitfalls and how it can be switched off