Some say that top-posting reverses the conversation, but if you are thumbing through the archives of top-posted threads, each contribution is on the first screen and you can navigate message to message in time-order

Don't include the email you're responding to then it's no longer top posting, plus you can still read the archive easily. Bottom posting is just as bad as top posting when you include the entire message Usually there is no need to include previous emails, it's a waste of space. The only time including the previous emails automatically is good is when you want to see a previous conversation thread before they included you. I see lots of information leakage from Outlook users this way. Is this done now?

As far as the HTML, I don't think I use it, but I fail to see why it's rude.

Next thread, red or blue text? brandon