I will endeavour to comply if those who are posting will also Reply to the post that they are replying to

Okay, I've been watching for an opportune moment to bring this up. I have never made sure that I always click the Reply icon for the post I'm responding to. Two reasons:
first, it was months before I realized that there was an option to be notified that there is a reply to your post, and that some people might actually be using this. (I wouldn't--I prefer being pleasantly surprised.) So, I would always just click the Reply icon on whatever the last post in the thread was, and quote from whichever post I was actually responding to, no matter that it may have been on another page.
Since my realization that I may have been doing some leading down the garden path, I have been conscientious about clicking on the actual post's Reply icon, but---
sometimes there isn't a particular post that I am posting a response to, and so--I still just click whatever the last post in the thread is. I apologize if I have inadvertantly gotten peoples' hopes up.