There are three things going on with the formatting. (1) Some people 
are not sending plain text to the Listserv. (2) Some people are 
composing their text in Microsoft Word and then pasting into the 
e-mail. (3) By default this list sends out e-mails with what Listserv 
calls Short Headers.

(1) Personally I like all my e-mail to come in as plain text. Such 
e-mails are smaller and easier to reply to. This page describes how 
to set your e-mail software to send plain text. It covers both 
software and the web-based e-mail services. Everybody that isn't 
already sure that they are sending plain text should check it out.

http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/listadmins/plaintext.html

If you don't find it listed at the above, try:

http://www.expita.com/nomime.html

And here's one for Gmail users:

http://email.about.com/od/gmailtips/qt/et122706.htm

(2) By default Microsoft Word adds "junk" characters, such as smart 
quotes. They are completely unnecessary. You can turn them off. In 
the XP version go to Format -> AutoFormat -> Options -> AutoFormat. 
All the boxes in the Replace section should be unchecked. There may 
be other issues with Word that I don't know about.

(3) There are three main ways that the Listserv sends out mail. Plus 
many others. The ShortHeader e-mails are much smaller, but don't 
include information on the character set used to create it. The 
FullHeaders option (a.k.a. Normal Listserv-style) does. The third is 
Digest mode. The traditional digest format never includes the 
information on the character set used for each post. So those people 
are probably stuck if non-plain text is sent. There is a MIME Digest 
option that many e-mail packages (like mine) can't handle. Instead of 
all the posts in one long e-mail you get links and have to click on 
each to see each post (I think). To me the advantage of the long text 
digest is you can lean on the down arrow and get through it quickly. 
You can change your heading setting here:

http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?SUBED1=no-milk&A=1

Probably all non-digest people should change to Full Headers.

Quoting. ICORS, which is hosting our list, has a rule that what you 
quote from the prior e-mail has to be kept to a minimum. I can 
simplify this. Anyone who posts to the list and under their reply is

----- Original Message ----
From: xx
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: xx
Subject: xx

is guilty of excessive quoting. There is never a reason to include 
all the header info from the prior post. All you need is the person's 
name and some of their text. And never any signature that the prior 
person may have included.

I hope this helps straighten out the formatting problems.

Don (listowner).