OK. So you're reading a post and you want to reply eh? Look at the bottom of this screen and click on the "Reply to Group" button. Good. Now you'll have a new screen up with two boxes. The one on the left is the text of the post you want to respond to and the one on the right is where your properly quoted response will go.
Now move your cursor to the top left of the text (in the box on the left) and highlight it down to the bottom and then click on the "Quote" button under that box. Now all of the text is properly quoted and ready for you to edit.
Now just go through and delete the irrelevant portions (if any), add your words of wisdom, click on the "CC: To Author" button if you want them to get a copy (check their address for anti-spam first), click on the "Use signature button (if you have one) and then just hit the "Send" button.
Ta Da, you've just posted the universally accepted format for posting to Usenet newsgroups using the AOL newsreader.
If one is using AOL 3.0 for Macintosh you get only one box (blank) and a send button! You must do all the work yourself in that case.
Purchase the optional keyboard for WebTv or WebTv Plus. The cost is about $50 and well worth it.
OK, now that you have the keyboard follow these directions provided by our very own JeepChick:
"I've noticed that a lot of WebTv posters don't know how to utilize our cut and paste features. If you will allow, me, I'd like to give JeepChick's patented lesson on how to cut and paste and shrinky dink the quoted material:
First thing you need to do is get the cursor to the body of the post or e-mail you want to quote. Do this by putting the cursor on any blue type. Now press Cmd and the "A" key. You should see the print change colors. Next press Cmd and "C" key. You should hear a chime. Now go to respond or reply and then press Cmd and "V". You should see the [material] you want to quote from come up on the screen.
Now, in order to cut material out of the post (I always dump everything up to the person's e-mail addy) you hold the shift key down and use the arrows--left/right give you space by space while up down will do a whole line at a time. Once you have the material highlighted that you want to snip, you can hit Cmd and "X" to delete it, or hit delete. Either way works. I think Return works too.
If you want to shrink the material you are quoting, you will have to do this:
Starting with the first line you need to quote, indent 5 spaces and make sure the cursor is right next to the first word (no spaces) and type the ">" in front of the word. Use Cmd and the right arrow to advance the cursor to the end of that line and hit return. It should go to the next line and there will be a space between the cursor and the first word. Indent, space the cursor over and type ">". (no spaces between).
I always double space between what I say and the quoted material. The best way to practice this is to send yourself an e-mail. It may take a couple tries, but you'll get the hang of it. If you find the shrinky dink part too time consuming, at the very least, you can use <<< and >>> to enclose the quoted material.
For so long, we webtvers took it on the chin for not being able to quote people's material that we were responding to. Now we have that ability. This old cheapo Classic Webtv constantly amazes me."
Jeep Chick *_*.