Is the following a thing in the U.S. of A, or common anywhere else, and I just didn’t notice that?

For about a year, some people reply to email questions by interspersing their replies with my questions. That’s good in general to provide context.

But what I don’t understand is the practice of adding the > at the beginning of lines of their replies.

You know, the syntax that’s used to denote a line as being quoted?

Can you tell me which button to press?

> Yes, press the first button.

This confused the heck out of me because the quotes are now the replies, and the non-quotes are my message.

This never occured to me before 2020, I’d say. Now even support people, those trained in email replies, do this.

In case you’re curious, the “correct” solution to mark-up an email reply to my question “Can you tell me which button to press?” would’ve been:

> Can you tell me which button to press?

Yes, press the first button.

As far as I know, all email clients do this automatically, so someone needs to do this manually and with intent.