Unanticipated Formattingproud as a parrot

[Paul Wiener]

When I reply to e-mail messages with the original-message quoted, I
often remove parts of the original and replace them with "<snip>". As
far as I know, this is standard Internet usage.

Occasionally, when I've snipped out a really long passage, I'll insert
something like "<industrial strength snip>".

The other day, I sent a friend a message with a line that contained
only the text, "<big snip>" (without the quotes}. The recipient's
e-mail software (AOL) chose not to display that line, but instead
displayed everything following it in a large font.

Was AOL within in its rights in regarding "<big snip>" as formatting
information, or was it just being stupid and buggy? My message had no
START HTML or START RTF tags, or anything else of the sort. Would other
Windows clients react the same way?

-- 
"Paul Wiener" <paulish@paulish.com>