Give us back our blank lines

Andy Spragg sparge at
Mon Aug 2 00:38:40 EST 1999

(Experiments with double blank lines to see if it will do any good,
expecting not)...

On 27 Jul 1999 00:44:03 -0700, Jan Kreft <Kreft at> wrote
(in part):

 >PS: Whatever happens to the empty lines in our mails? Where do they get lost?

Hear, hear. This newsgroup is hard work, with all the blank lines
stripped out. I have not encountered any other that does this.

Considered opinion (with good reason) on usenet is that blank lines
improve the legibility of messages, and in the worst case may make the
difference between messages being read and not.

I thought moderation was about the wholesale stripping out of spam,
not also about the unbidden stripping out of blank lines to
deleterious effect.



Moderators comment:


I don't do ANY editing of the messages which are forwarded to the 
newsgroup. I have no control of what is done at the BIOSCI. My only role is 
to remove spams etc as you note (4 out of 5 messages fall into this 
category). The only editing I occasionally do is to remove multiple copies 
of the 'footer' message ("To reply to bla bla...").
If I was to sit and remove every blank line from the (fortunately many 
lately) messages I would have little time for other things.
Hope this clears some points.

Claus Sternberg

See the BIOFILMS homepage at for info

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