in article , David CL Francis at
wrote on 5/30/04 2:08 PM:

On Sat, 29 May 2004 at 17:16:14 in message
, Philip Sondericker
wrote:

Previously quoted material may occasionally be needed for context (see above
for example). As for the signature thing, this is the first time I've ever
heard it mentioned by anyone, but I suppose it's no big deal for me to avoid
quoting them.

If the message is correctly constructed with hyphenhyphenspace as
a signature separator then, if you have a newsreader that works as they
are intended to work, the signature will be automatically removed when
you press reply.

My newsreader must be correctly configured, because I've noticed that it
indeed does this (as you can see below--I swear it did it on its own!). This
renders somewhat ironic a previous poster taking me to task for not editing
out his signature, when it turns out he's not even separating it correctly.

You may have one guess as to which system does not work as it should.
The system really needs changing, as adding to the failure rate are many
people who appear to delete what they must assume is a surplus space
after the two hyphens!