Use of quoting to preserve context in electronic mail dialogues

This paper reports a survey on how users maintain context in an electronic mail (e-mail) dialogue and, in particular, the use of quoting as a response strategy. The target group belonged to a community of experienced users of computer-mediated communication systems: readers of Usenet newsgroups. The results showed that quoting a message, i.e., including it in a comment or reply, was a widely used technique in e-mail dialogues, but that the majority of respondents used it selectively. Factors that affected the use of quoting were the category of receiver and the length and nature of the message. Contrary to expectations, the results showed that users perceived the use of quoting as contributing to the sense of conversation when communicating in e-mail.