32.4.3 Citing Mail

C-c C-y

Yank the selected message from the mail reader, as a citation (message-yank-original).

C-c C-q

Fill each paragraph cited from another message (message-fill-yanked-message).

You can use the command C-c C-y (message-yank-original) to cite a message that you are replying to. This inserts the text of that message into the mail buffer. This command works only if the mail buffer is invoked from a mail reader running in Emacs, such as Rmail.

By default, Emacs inserts the string ‘>’ in front of each line of the cited text; this prefix string is specified by the variable message-yank-prefix. If you call message-yank-original with a prefix argument, the citation prefix is not inserted.

After using C-c C-y, you can type C-c C-q (message-fill-yanked-message) to fill the paragraphs of the cited message. One use of C-c C-q fills all such paragraphs, each one individually. To fill a single paragraph of the quoted message, use M-q. If filling does not automatically handle the type of citation prefix you use, try setting the fill prefix explicitly. See Filling.

You can customize mail citation through the hook mail-citation-hook. For example, you can use the Supercite package, which provides more flexible citation (see Introduction in Supercite).