Email formatting can get messed up when default line breaks are
inserted by email programs and the email is then forwarded.
Most modern email applications can automatically wrap full paragraphs
of text to match the current window size, just like a word processing document,
so the word wrap option should
be turned off if your application uses it. However, some older email programs
and Internet mailing list software do
not have this
ability, and can only handle lines up to a maximum length, usually something
less than 80 characters. In order to help these older programs, some email programs
paragraphs into a series of individual lines by inserting carriage returns (line
breaks), sometimes at 80 characters, some at 76 characters, some at 71 characters,
sometimes at even
This usually works fine the first time an email is sent and produces fairly
normal looking text. But if the email is forwarded, and goes through a second
at a lower character count, then it can get messed up and end up looking like
the following, or worse, like the example below.
>>>This works fine the first time it is done. But if the email
someone else and
>>>goes through a second trimming at a lower character
count, especially if it
has been through
>>>a few forwards and has been lengthened with ">"
characters, you get
>>>looks like this, or worse.
The section on fixing messed up formatting
describes how to repair these types of messages if you wish.