don't like HTML email? here's your fix.

[Steve Lamb]

Wednesday, March 29, 2000, 2:06:19 PM, David wrote:
> Most of the html e-mail that I receive uses bold and italic and different
> text sizes and colours to distinguish blocks of text. The sender does not do
> this to make it look pretty but to aid comprehension.

    Funny, books have been pretty darn comprehensible for years with simple
black on white, ~60 characters wide.  I don't buy the comprehension schtick
one bit.  You want your message to be comprehensible, a spell checker and a
few courses in remedial English (assuming that is the language used) go a lot
further than blinking hot pink on yellow text.  Trust me on this.

> Used in the manner I have described html can make e-mails quicker and easier
> to comprehend; it's not essential but neither is it totally worthless.

    Nope, it does not.  It gives that illusion.  However, if a person is using
purdy culers and kewl fawnts doesn't mean they are any more comprehensible
than before.  In fact, I would dare say it is the other way around.

    It really is a common mistake.  Did you know that the advent of the word
processor did not magically impart the ability to write a decent paper onto
the hundreds of thousands of executives across the nation?  I know it hasn't,
my mother is still employed in the same profession she always has and is as
busy as ever correcting the simple mistakes in grammar, punctuation and
spelling those high-paid executives hammer into their word processors.  If
Microsoft Word, Corel's WordPerfect or even Star Office isn't making these
individuals any clearer with all the formatting, stylizing and coloring
available in a full blown word processor I really do doubt that *BOLD*,
/italics/, _underlines_, bulleted lists, centering and colors is going to do
it in email, either.  Meanwhile all it will do is serve to give these
individuals a false sense that they are clarifying when they are, in fact,
obfuscating.

> Incidentally I believe that the chisels that masons use these days are made
> from chrome vanadium steel and I don't expect many of them cling to the hand
> forged carbon steel variety ...

    Yet it still does one thing only and has not changed form or function much
through the years.  Text, too, has changed very little in the same time frame.
Just because it has now become convenient for people to colorize and stylize
text doesn't mean it automatically becomes clearer nor that it /should/ be
done at all.  Quite frankly, none of the individuals wielding these tools are
word masons of any note and I'd much rather the understand the basic tools of
the trade before graduating to something more complex.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
         ICQ: 5107343          | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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