I got the following from the Due South news group. I found I was
in violation in a couple of areas- line length and posting in
html- which I have corrected. It is a good list.
 
Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME
 
1. Put spaces between your comments and quoted text. Please add
at
least one blank line between your comments and whatever comments
you're responding to. I've seen a bunch of postings here recently
that have two or three lines of original text nearly buried in
20 lines or so of the original posting.
 
2. Trim down the original posting so that you include only the
part you're responding to. I don't know about other people, but
if I see more than one or two screens of quoted text, I don't
keep going to find out where the new stuff is. If your newsreader
options are set to automatically attach the entire previous
posting at the end, please change that setting or trim down the
text after it's added. We want to be able to see what *your*
comments are!
 
3. Keep signature files short. About 4-5 lines is the generally
accepted length. Longer ones are especially confusing if you
only have a couple of lines of actual comments above them. Your
comments get outweighed by nonessential text. Again, it makes
it harder for us to enjoy your thoughts about DS!
 
4. Let us know who you are! Some of the no-line-space and big-
sig-file problems lately have been exacerbated by people not
signing their postings. Putting your name at the bottom of
your comments (with, of course, blank lines above and below)
provides another visual clue that we've reached the end of
your comments and everything afterward is a sig file.
 
5. Keep each line to 75 characters or less. Although a number
of people these days are using Web browsers for Usenet, most
of us still use dedicated newsreaders that can't go more than
80 characters wide. So set your window to no more than that
and leave a bit of a margin at the righthand side. (FYI, this
posting contains lines of about 65 characters in length.)
 
6. Turn off HTML and MIME encoding. With the increasing use
of Web browsers and Outlook Express on Usenet, some of you are
generating messages that to the vast majority of us, look like
random letters buried in a mass of garbage characters. I've
heard from users of both those types of programs that this
encoding can be turned off, so please make sure it is.