2. I work with a lot of civil servants. (A noun in itself, as opposed to a modified one.) One with whom I email regularly numbers all paragraphs in his emails, only sparing his salutation, valediction and signature this tortuous fate. (Even pre-valedictory statements like "Please get back to me if you have any questions" are deemed to warrant the numbering treatment.)
3. It's a hangover from the necessary behaviour in government reports and memos, where paragraphs are numbered for future reference, documents that oft span multiple pages made up of 20+ paragraphs.
4. While in emails it clearly provides useful points of reference for future correspondence, I can't help but feel that it destroys the beauty and natural flow of the English language, formularising something that should never be formularised. Are emails genuinely that long to warrant numerical segmentation? I think not.
