[Reader-list] Writing english

[Monica Narula]

Hi geert

Actually fellows are told/suggestions given about posting etiquette,  
but its a busy world :-)

and i think you missed the posting by silvan that says that a blog  
has been begun by him of the reader-list at least (as a whole) at  
http://readerlist.freeflux.net/blog/

best
M

On 23-Mar-06, at 3:03 PM, Geert Lovink wrote:

> Hi, thanks so much for bringing this issue to the attention of the  
> list.
>
> Now that we're talking, I would like to make some suggestions.
>
> Often the postings that are so hard to read are coming from Sarai  
> fellows that are invited or required (or not, please correct me...)  
> to post their research outcomes to this list.
>
> Many of these postings lack even the most basic formatting. Perhaps  
> Sarai could give some basic email and web training before the  
> scholars embark on their journey.
>
> Often there are not even subject lines. Or it says just says  
> "second posting". No name of the author or intro, nothing. We  
> plunge directly into the story. That's such a missed opportunity.
>
> Indeed, the fonts of the posting and the absence of the paragraphs  
> is an issue too, but this is a little harder to tackle as every  
> mail program that we use is different. Still... with a little  
> design awareness we could have so much more pleasure in reading.
>
> It would be much better to migrate the very interesting sarai  
> fellow postings to some special website or blogs and pay a bit more  
> attention to the layout of the texts as the material is really  
> first class. Of course this should not replace email/this list, but  
> now a lot of the efforts are wasted, I fear.
>
> Best, Geert
>
>
> On 23 Mar 2006, at 9:17 AM, Vivek Narayanan wrote:
>
>> As far as I can tell, the answer might be rather simple.
>>
>> Any messages to the reader-list that are not plain text are held  
>> up for moderator approval, for a variety of important reasons.
>>
>> People write formatted text in their word processors, then convert  
>> this into plain text.
>>
>> Things like paragraph breaks, get lost in this.
>>
>> Solution: save your text as plain text, then paste it in.  Before  
>> sending, see that your mail client is sending it as plain text,  
>> and see that the sentence stops and paragraph breaks are preserved  
>> in that format.
>>
>> Am I wrong?  Any advice from techies?
>>
>> Vivek
>>
>> Pankaj kaushal wrote:
>>
>>> parismita singh wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think it has less to do with how you actually construct the  
>>>> email and
>>>> send it into the readerlist... because my email does have all the
>>>> sentence stops, and tons of ellipsis etc., but when it appears  
>>>> on the
>>>> readerlist, it's just one block of text.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think it has to do with how braindead your email client is. You  
>>> seem
>>> to be using yahoo! Its extremely difficult to create sentences  
>>> and take
>>> care of alignment in that small little box that Yahoo! mail (Sigh! I
>>> work for Yahoo!) provides. A bug has been created as I write this.
>>>
>>> Most probably you edit in a text editor like MS Word and paste the
>>> contents in that little box causing the text to become a big  
>>> block of
>>> text. No?
>>>
>>>
>>>> ok - somebody explain this better to Mr. Kaushal please!!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Anyone has a better explanation?
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with  
> subscribe in the subject header.
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

Monica Narula
Raqs Media Collective
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net