### Author:  [@niemeyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/niemeyer)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 04:18:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/1 "2017-04-20T04:18:44Z")
Hello again, and just one more minor nit.
The stock email templates seem to be adding too much padding around the actual post content.
Here is an example just received:
```plaintext
----==_mimepart_58f8139956892_20ce3fbcdc0cd6bc7471c
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
---
```
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 08:18:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/2 "2017-04-20T08:18:05Z")
Can you describe how to reproduce this issue?
---
### Author:  [@niemeyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/niemeyer)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 12:55:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/3 "2017-04-20T12:55:00Z")
You just reproduced it:
```plaintext
----==_mimepart_58f8712877df0_663f8ea8de3cdc3799b
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Can you describe how to reproduce this issue?
---
```
---
### Author:  [@elijah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elijah)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 23:19:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/4 "2017-04-20T23:19:32Z")
Not asked, but equally important: Can you describe how to observe this issue?
Some answers:
1. Use a mail user agent (MUA) that prefers text/plain parts to text/html parts. (I use a heavily customized version of `mailx`, your milage may vary.)
2. View the mail file on disk in a text editor to see how it is constructed.
3. Use power tools in your MUA of choice to look at other MIME alternative formats.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 23:21:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/5 "2017-04-20T23:21:54Z")
I think he’s referring to the view source of the email..
```
Precedence: list
List-ID:
List-Archive: https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/edit-history-now-public/99450
----==_mimepart_58f908eba5b52_11c33fab8d1417201288cf
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
@sam? @codinghorror? @orenwolf? @bueller?
---
[Visit Topic](https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/edit-history-now-public/99450/2) or reply to this email to respond.
```
Why this would matter to anyone, ever, I have no idea.
---
### Author:  [@niemeyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/niemeyer)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 23:33:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/6 "2017-04-20T23:33:01Z")
The text/plain part is actually used as-is by clients that cannot or prefer not to render the HTML content, which I assume is the reason why Discourse is including it in the first place. As some empirical evidence, the reason I’m reporting is that a real person with a real email client complained that the spacing is odd in the usual client that tends to work well otherwise (for some value of that).
---
### Author:  [@elijah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elijah)
#### Post date: [20.Апрель.2017 23:59:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/excessive-spacing-on-text-plain-email-content/61297/7 "2017-04-20T23:59:00Z")
As a real person who uses an email client (might not be real) who does see the text/plain parts, my feeling is Discourse is above average here. I have a little nit that the text is text/markdown, not text/plain, but it looks a lot better than some sites that obviously just use very poor html to text filters. _“Oh, look, it forgot to strip the style sheet!”_
The “minor nit” bit from the first post is probably accurate.