I’d argue that seeing 1. 1. 1. Is actually better than seeing them increasing but being out of order. Less of a hack and while reading them unformatted you just think of it like a HTML OL with list items. Or of the 1 as a keyword meaning ordered list item.
Interesting. With editable docs, things sometimes get added above the points or reordered and then re-numbered which makes the discussion misleading. The reason I prefer bullets is that it encourages people to quote the relevant section when discussing.
The judgement about whether an email needs a response is left to the receiver who would be responding, in their statement. I like that mental model of things. :)
That leaves room for miscommunication, though. If someone expects a response from me, I'd rather they make sure to ask it at the very top so that I don't miss that request with everything else that's going on.
Re-reading the statement, maybe they simply mean replies should be above the original e-mail rather than inline?