Received Gmail message contains arrows (>) on every line

[Michael Cullis]

 I am enquiring for a friend of a friend and do not know the relevant operating system, etc. When she sends an email via Gmail the recipient receives the message with right arrows (>) on every line and excessive line spaces between each line. As an example, one message she sent should have printed out on two pages but took ten. I have copied a section as an example. NOTE: She forwarded a copy of the email received from Sony to me and this is how it arrived:


> Thank you for registering your BRAVIA LCD TV purchase(s) and for paying the Blu-ray player postage and handling fee (which will appear on your credit card statement as ‘SONY AUSTRALIA PL NORTH RYDE’). 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Please now follow the steps below to claim your BONUS Blu-ray player and remember, we must receive your documents within fourteen days from the date you registered your claim. 
> 
> 

Is there a default setting she needs to change?

[Andy]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 18:17, Michael Cullis <kafk...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> I am enquiring for a friend of a friend and do not know the relevant
> operating system, etc. When she sends an email via Gmail the recipient
> receives the message with right arrows (>) on every line and excessive line

> spaces between each line. ...

The angle brackets (>) on every line are the usual way to indicate
that the text on that line was forwarded or replied. It probably
looked that way in the sender's mail, before she sent it. (Like your
lines above in my reply.)

They should not be there on new messages; only on forwards and replies.

They are added automatically by almost every email program when the
person using it presses Reply or Forward. (If the original email
message had HTML formatting, it is more common to have a vertical bar
on the far left instead of the angle bracket.)

I don't think Gmail has a setting to disable them. (Check Gmail Labs
to see if they've added one.) She could either edit them out by hand,
or delete the entire body and cut-and-paste from the original message
into the forwarded one while she is composing it.

As for the extra lines, I see that occasionally (not often) too, again
with forwards and replies. I'm not sure what causes that. It's
probably a function of the formatting of the original message being
forwarded, perhaps if it gets converted from HTML to plain text.

Andy

[Gary Greene]

In the dark old days of the internet, USENET, BITNET, Mail ListServs, etc., and possibly even before on the old college and business mainframes, mailing between local accounts, whenever part of a message was quoted (and hence on forwarded mail), the quoted text was preceded on every new line by a right angle bracket.  Lines could not be more than 72 characters long (less recommended to accommodate quotes of quotes of quotes ad infinitum).  Since these systems ran under Unix or some variant, the character shown was specified in your mailrc file (if memory serves), but the default was a right angle bracket.

The old sendmail program (and others) are still out there on some systems... so for backward compatibility mail serving software still supports the angle bracket to indicate quoted text.  Normally these days, this shows up only with forwarded messages. I'm 63; please forgive any inaccuracies to early senility.  ;->

Gary Greene               ange...@gmail.com
San Jose, California

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[kafka]

Thanks Andy,

After reading your reply I seem to remember having the same problem in
Windows Mail some time ago. I have passed on your reply to my friend.

On Jan 23, 11:06 am, Andy <AI.eg...@gmail.com> wrote: