it is not necessary to quote a previous post in your reply if you are following the train of thought in the thread,
Amen to that. The following is not aimed at the OP, specifically, but I have become increasingly annoyed by the fact that it seems that those who are joining the forum these days just do not seem to know how to use the Quote feature (which allows for the collection of multiple quoted segments if you need to do a point by point.
All you have to do to quote a specific small tidbit is to select (highlight) it and hit the Quote control that appears once you have. Here's a screenshot of how I quoted just the part from Mr. Walter's post saying you don't (and shouldn't) hit the Reply button, quoting an entire message. Often, any quotation is unnecessary, but when one or more points are needed to establish a context in a reply, the Quote function should be used to collect those bits and insert them in to the reply.
You can even go back and snag only the phrase you want to quote after having quoted another. I decided to snag
@5801edwardholmes' statement, "I apologize," which, when highlighted looked just like Mr. Walter's did. After hitting the Quote function, in order to insert it, you hit the Insert Quotes button that appears below where you're typing. The quote will be inserted immediately after wherever your cursor happens to be at the moment you hit the button:
If you collected several quotes, the insert button will will read, Insert Quotes (X), where X is the number of individual items quoted:
Then, if you activate it, you can choose to delete any one of the things you've selected, if you've changed your mind, or to insert them at the cursor: