Stop sending me your errors

My desktop email client of choice can render both text/plain and text/html emails. I happen to prefer text/plain versions. And you're right, I should get with the times. But when you misuse multipart/alternative to send me an error, you're not helping me or anyone else for that matter. In fact, you're doing the exact opposite. The ancient scrolls document multipart/alternative as a way to present the same information in multiple interchangeable forms. Most commonly, this is used to send the HTML version of an email alongside its plain text counterpart. In other words, multipart/alternative is NOT FOR SENDING ME YOUR DAMNED ERRORS . If my email client cannot handle your email, it's the client's job to report such errors. This morning, I received an email with the body: Plain text version not available After switching to the HTML version, I was not greeted with a rendered equivalent of: &LT!DOCTYPE html> html > head > title > ... &LT/ title > &LT/ head > body > p > Plain text version not available &LT/ p > &LT/ body > &LT/ html > Instead, I was greeted with actual email content. I would have been surprised if this weren't so common. Let's consider the scenarios where a user would be presented with the text/plain version: Scenario: They're using an ancient pre-MIME email client because they are a time traveller from the '80s.