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The ASCII ribbon campaign is an internet phenomenon that started in 1998 advocating that email should continue to be sent in Human Readable ASCII text format.
() ascii ribbon campaign - against HTML Email
/\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary document formats
Following the development of Microsoft Windows '95, some people became annoyed that they were receiving email in HTML and other non-human readable formats. Sally Hambridge of the Intel Corporation wrote the RFC 1855 "Netiquette Guidelines" which suggests "Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in email messages". The first appearance of a ribbon in support of the campaign was in the signature of an email dated 17th June 1988 by Mauricio Teixeira of Brazil.