1) You wrote: “So why not browse the web with Lynx? Why format documents at all? Why not just put everything in Courier 10 and be done with it?”

Very good questions, indeed. I would add some pictures in Courier 10 ASCII art. ;-)

2) I agree that we‚Äôll just have to agree to disagree. But your conclusion about “the rest of the world” goes too far. Maybe you are missing something when the recipient of the fancy formatted message cannot dig up the diamonds from the pile of visual clutter. I think that the main problem with html e-mails is that many people try to replace the real information with the meaningless “chrome”.

3) As you can see I am a big fan of the numbered lists so I agree with the main theme of your post.

Great advice. I just read this, and haven’t started to implement it yet, consciously. But intuitively it resonates a ton.

Bigger Issue/Opp: think about the structure and format of the message based upon the nature of the content and substance. (Reference, for you GTD Connect members, my InConversation interview with Alan Nelson). I think there are tons of examples of this being done well or poorly, and it’s a great frame for clarifying at least some of the fog.

Thanks!

David

So why not browse the web with Lynx? Why format documents at all? Why not just put everything in Courier 10 and be done with it?

For most people, formatting makes for more effective communication, regardless of the medium.

Guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree TesTeq, and you and Steve Gibson can just miss out on communicating with the rest of the world who are just using the default settings on their email clients. ;-)

As Scott Allen wrote there are significant security and privacy issues with html e-mail (at least in current implementations). On this topic I am with Steve Gibson (“Security Now!” podcast). He deletes every html e-mail before reading. :-)

Besides I think that fancy formatting is just a clutter around the real information.

Besides accommodating the text-based Unix/Linux fanatics, the main other arguments against HTML email are that images can be used as an email tracking mechanism and that links can be disguised to be something other than they actually are. In theory, malicious code could also be embedded in an HTML email.

In practice, though, Outlook, GMail, et al., all have various protection mechanisms against those things. Plus you should be running anti-virus/anti-spyware anyway.

The purpose of email is communication. The purpose of text formatting is more effective communication. Bottom line: the advantages FAR outweigh the risks, if you take the other appropriate protection measures.

Following the privacy/security argument, people should use a text-based browser like Lynx. If you’re willing to browse HTML, why not use HTML email?

Anyway, even if you prefer text-based HTML, you can still do the numbered lists, and create “pseudo-headers” using all-caps, although probably just for a word or phrase, not a whole sentence.

Editor

Oh, only difference for me is in the first line of each actionable item: I underscore instead of bold the first line, and I always give a ‘shift-enter’.

I guess the difference there isn’t that big, as long as you make you seperate items stand out.