> entire message
response to message

Thanks to poor design of some PC-based mail agents, one will
occasionally see the entire quoted message after the response, like
this
response to message
> entire message

but this practice is strongly deprecated.

Though > remains the standard inclusion leader, | is occasionally used
for extended quotations where original variations in indentation are
being retained (one mailer even combines these and uses |>). One also
sees different styles of quoting a number of authors in the same
message: one (deprecated because it loses information) uses a leader
of > for everyone, another (the most common) is > > > > , > > > ,
etc. (or >>>> , >>>, etc., depending on line length and nesting depth)
reflecting the original order of messages, and yet another is to use a
different citation leader for each author, say > , : , | , }
(preserving nesting so that the inclusion order of messages is still
apparent, or tagging the inclusions with authors' names). Yet another
style is to use each poster's initials (or login name) as a citation
leader for that poster.

Occasionally one sees a # leader used for quotations from
authoritative sources such as standards documents; the intended
allusion is to the root prompt (the special Unix command prompt issued
when one is running as the privileged super-user).
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