Method and apparatus for normalizing quoting styles in electronic mail messages

• US 20040117736A1
• Filed: 12/16/2002
• Published: 06/17/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/16/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center, Inc. (Xerox Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Newman, Paula S.
• Granted Patent: US 7,340,674 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/523
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/22 Parsing or analysis of headers

Abstract

A method and apparatus is provided for making message adjustments to normalize quoting styles in message content for applications such as finding messages dealing with a particular topic, or finding inter-conversation topic groupings via centroid-based clustering methods. First, message is analyzed into its essential text, plus inessential material such as entire prefixed or suffixed. Then, the essential text of the node-associated message is adjusted to avoid vector distance distortions based on differences in quoting styles. Initially, selective quotes are included, as these are reasonably considered to form a logical part of the message, and entire prefixed or suffixed messages are omitted. Finally, if the message does not contain selective quotes, an analysis is done to determine whether all or part of the parent message constitutes a logical, albeit implicit, references. If so, all or some parts of the essential text of the parent are included in the adjusted message.

Claims

1. ) A method for normalizing quoting styles in electronic mail messages comprising:

a) receiving a first text having a first issue and a first length and a second text having a second issue and a second length,

b) determining one or more quoting text portions of the first text which comprise at least a portion of the second text,

c) deleting from the first text any quoting text portions of the first text which consist of the substantially all of the second text,

d) determining whether the first text does not contain any remaining quoting portions, and whether the first issue and the second issue are likely to be the same, and

e) responsive to the determination in step d, adding at least a portion of the second text to the first text.

2. ) The method of claim 1 wherein the method of determining if the first issue and the second issue are likely to be the same, comprises determining if the first length and second length are no more than approximately 400 characters of stemmed, non-stop words each.

3. ) The method of claim 1 wherein adding at least a portion of the second text comprises adding substantially all of the second text.