TL;DR: In summary if you "forward" an email it should be a verbatim copy (or else you are essentially mis-quoting the original writer). Otherwise you could summarise and rephrase the email and ask the question again to the onward recipient, but then you wouldn't be mis-crediting words to the original email-writer.

Longer answer:

No, in the case you described (forwarding on an actual email chain) it isn't acceptable to "edit out" parts of emails being forwarded -- because it is then a mis-representation of what the person who wrote the original email said. (In opposition to something like copying and pasting parts of someone's email into your own 'proposal' document.)

If there are parts that are sensitive which the recipient shouldn't see, they could be replaced by something like "[redacted by John Smith for privacy reasons]" (where John Smith is the person forwarding the email), but they shouldn't just be deleted without comment.

Ideally though, if the original email was sent "in confidence" (implicitly or explicitly as it may be) it shouldn't be forwarded-with-deleted-parts but rather the person forwarding it should write their own email with the things they actually want to (and can) say.

Possible exception (which I don't think applies in your case, but more for general information):

• Deleting the "tail" of the email chain (a bunch of earlier emails) so that the earliest email being forwarded is the first one that's actually relevant to the recipient. There is still a need to be careful with this though, if it removes context that would change the meaning for the recipient of the forwarded message.

TL;DR: In summary if you "forward" an email it should be a verbatim copy (or else you are essentially mis-quoting the original writer). Otherwise you could summarise and rephrase the email and ask the question again to the onward recipient, but then you wouldn't be mis-crediting words to the original email-writer.

Longer answer:

No, in the case you described (forwarding on an actual email chain) it isn't acceptable to "edit out" parts of emails being forwarded -- because it is then a mis-representation of what the person who wrote the original email said. (In opposition to something like copying and pasting parts of someone's email into your own 'proposal' document.)

If there are parts that are sensitive which the recipient shouldn't see, they could be replaced by something like "[redacted by John Smith for privacy reasons]" (where John Smith is the person forwarding the email), but they shouldn't just be deleted without comment.

Ideally though, if the original email was sent "in confidence" (implicitly or explicitly as it may be) it shouldn't be forwarded-with-deleted-parts but rather the person forwarding it should write their own email with the things they actually want to (and can) say.

Possible exception (which I don't think applies in your case, but more for general information):

• Deleting the "tail" of the email chain (a bunch of earlier emails) so that the earliest email being forwarded is the first one that's actually relevant to the recipient. There is still a need to be careful with this though, if it removes context that would change the meaning for the recipient of the forwarded message.

• Redacting (as mentioned above), or indeed adding something into the original if it's clear you are adding it and it isn't part of the original. (e.g. if the email refers to "that meeting" and you add "[John Smith: this is referring to the strategy meeting about the Y project]" or similar.

No, in the case you described (forwarding on an actual email chain) it isn't acceptable to "edit out" parts of emails being forwarded. Because it is then a mis-representation of what the person who wrote the original email said. (In opposition to something like copying and pasting parts of someone's email into your own 'proposal' document.)

If there are parts that are sensitive which the recipient shouldn't see, they could be replaced by something like "[redacted by John Smith for privacy reasons]" (where John Smith is the person forwarding the email), but they shouldn't just be deleted.

Ideally though if the original email was sent "in confidence" it shouldn't be forwarded-with-deleted-parts but rather the person forwarding it should write their own email with the things they actually want to (and can) say.

In summary if you "forward" an email it should be a verbatim copy. Otherwise you could summarise and rephrase the email and ask the question again to the onward recipient, but then you wouldn't be mis-crediting words to the original email-writer.

TL;DR: In summary if you "forward" an email it should be a verbatim copy (or else you are essentially mis-quoting the original writer). Otherwise you could summarise and rephrase the email and ask the question again to the onward recipient, but then you wouldn't be mis-crediting words to the original email-writer.

Longer answer:

No, in the case you described (forwarding on an actual email chain) it isn't acceptable to "edit out" parts of emails being forwarded -- because it is then a mis-representation of what the person who wrote the original email said. (In opposition to something like copying and pasting parts of someone's email into your own 'proposal' document.)

If there are parts that are sensitive which the recipient shouldn't see, they could be replaced by something like "[redacted by John Smith for privacy reasons]" (where John Smith is the person forwarding the email), but they shouldn't just be deleted without comment.

Ideally though, if the original email was sent "in confidence" (implicitly or explicitly as it may be) it shouldn't be forwarded-with-deleted-parts but rather the person forwarding it should write their own email with the things they actually want to (and can) say.

Possible exception (which I don't think applies in your case, but more for general information):

• Deleting the "tail" of the email chain (a bunch of earlier emails) so that the earliest email being forwarded is the first one that's actually relevant to the recipient. There is still a need to be careful with this though, if it removes context that would change the meaning for the recipient of the forwarded message.