> Has that ever been a thing? Quoting (and trimming) the message you are
> replying to has been normal since at least the late 1980's (when I
> started to use E-Mail).
Peter,
My memory of email spans only a slightly larger period but no doubt
yours is better than mine. My main reader was emac's rmail until too
much mail wasn't text. In my memory you had to turn on quoting the
original (though irrc rmail had an insert-original command to allow one
to do it as necessary - and at "point"). I see today that Thunderbird
sets quoting on by default (per account) but it is optional. But it can
also display an entire thread in the correct who-replied-to-whom. I get
that often there's a particular sub-point of the original which needs to
be at hand in the reply but rarely the entire message - so maybe we're
back to it's a Netiquette thing (and in my case at least often a
laziness thing).