How to format comments like a pro
Yesterday commenter “Turtler” asked this question: “How do I format my posts, such as bolding, making quotes, etc?”
It occurred to me that a lot of people might be interested in the answer to that question. The answer is to use HTML code. You can find tons of websites with instructions, but most of them list all sorts of code that you’ll never need to comment on a blog. So here are just the basics.
To bold something, enclose it between two bracketed codes. The first one would be left bracket, then a b, then a right bracket. Then you write the words you want bolded. Then you write the closing bracketed code: first a left bracket, than /b and then a right bracket. If I were to write it out here properly instead of describing it, the code would disappear and you’d just see the bolded words like this.
[ADDENDUM: by the word “bracket” I mean this symbol for the left/opening one < and this symbol for the right/closing one > .]
For italics, same thing only with an i between the brackets in the first code and a /i between the brackets in the second code, with the word or words you want italicized in between the two bracketed codes.
For quotes you have the same thing, only blockquote is the word in the first set of brackets and then /blockquote is in the second set of brackets, with the words of the quote in-between.
For links, it’s much the same thing only a bit more complex. Before the link you put a left bracket and then a href=”. Make sure there’s a space between that a and the href or it won’t work properly. Then cut and paste the link. Then on the right of the link you put a left bracket and then /a and then a right bracket to close it out.
That’s all most people will ever need.
This one’s OK.
http://www.simplehtmlguide.com/cheatsheet.php
The “bracket” for html tags is this symbol: <
The html code is kind of like a parenthetical except sideways carat symbols are used, rather than parentheses.
Then you bracket the action you want to follow the tag by ending with a greater than sign >
You can use i to italicize, b to bold (you can also use the word strong) or blockquote.
When you want the action to stop you end the tag with the same structure, however you have to remember to place a forward slash before the action. So ending a blockquote (I'll place the actual text you would type in parantheses. Don't type the parantheses.) would be lesser than symbol ().
Here’s an example of it in action:
If it’s still confusing this page might help: https://gyankosh.net/html/html-blockquote-and-preformatted-tag/
Well, WordPress decided to show some of the characters and not others, so I recommend the above webpage to see an example visually.
Jodi certainly knows how to bold and add web page links. No wonder she earns $15,000 a month!
I’ll be glad when someone comes up with a way for readers of a blog like Neo’s to delete or flag spam. I’ve noticed that her blog, Gerard’s blog, and Small Dead Animals have become infested with work-from-home spam over the past month or so. Disqus allows commenters on blogs like InstaPundit to flag spam for the blog owner’s attention, but I don’t know of any way to do it on WordPress blogs. Rufus, do you have any info. about vaporizing spam?
PA Cat:
The spam isn’t really much of a problem. The spam filter catches most of it (lately, the rate is about 120 or so a day) but every now and then a particularly clever spammer gets by. That’s happened a few times lately, but just a few. Sometimes it stays up there a few hours if I’m busy and don’t see it, but once I see it I flag it as spam and the spam filter learns to recognize it over time. Or sometimes the spam filter gets an update and becomes better on its own.
Rufus T. Firefly:
I just added an explanation in the post of what I meant by the word “brackets.” It’s not really a bracket; it’s as you describe. It’s hard to explain this without triggering code that hides the explanation when it’s printed out.
Neo–
Thank you for the explanation. I must say that at least your and Gerard’s spammers avoid the use of “cam girl” avatars– which crop up repeatedly on other blogs. And it does look as if your spam filter is updated regularly.
BTW, do you still get any interesting bots of the type that you used to cite for your readers’ amusement?
I think I will stick with CAPS, quotation marks “….” and
exclamation points !!!!!
If I can’t get my point across with them, then there is no hope for me.
PA Cat:
I think I still get them, but I’ve been too busy to look for them.
>< are commonly called angle brackets by the programming folks as apposed to square [] round () and curly {}
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Find markdown much easier to remember than HTML here’s some mark down that I converted with markdowntohtml.com
Here’s a test of markdown to HTML. Bold word.
Strikeoutword.What I’d like to know is how to get an avatar.
Where I come / came from,
[ ] , ( ) , and { } are brackets, parentheses, and braces, respectively.
Y M M V . . .
Neo,
I found the easy way to get all these format and its very simple and no exepriance.
I am using TextPad® (the link will take you to download page).
Its very simple small program and can give you all formats and easy to use
Martin, we see Curly, but what happened to Moe and Larry?
They were in a bracket by themselves, and had all kinds of angles.
@ R2L – winner winner chicken dinner
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fclipart-library.com%2Fimg%2F1741084.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
Neo, there are two ways to refer to the “carets” used by HTML — one is called “angle brackets” (since one name for the others [ ] is “square brackets”).
Another term (less common) is “brokets” (as in “broken bracket”).
These, by the way { } are called “curly brackets” in the same venue, or, more commonly, “braces”.
“Caret” the general term for the pointy type of insignia — >, <, ^, ?, ?, etc.
Realize that a lot of the stuff shown on that html cheatsheet may not be supported here, this only supports a subset of it.
The main things of interest, along with their “closers” (e.g., < /xxx >):
i
b
blockquote
strike
Italics, Bold, “Quoting”, and “strikeout” (
xxx)Those cover most of the main formatting activities.
Oh, and if you want to put < or > into your text, put in (four straight chars, no spaces, I’ve added spaces)
& lt ;
and
& gt ;
those four characters in direct sequence will be reproduced as the desired symbol, “less than” (lt) and “greater than” (gt)
… and to confuse things, if you are keeping score at home, “strikeout” is”K”.
Dana should be recognized for her timing. 🙂
A long time ago the html codes used to appear near the “Leave a Reply” line.
In case it isn’t clear, to get bold text you enclose the phrase “bold text” in these brackets: <>.
<b>bold text</b> produces bold text
For italic, the same, except an “i” replaces the “b”: <i>italic text</i> produces italic text.
OOPS! I forgot to mention that the </b> and </i> are there to turn the bolding and italic off. If you just type <b><i> to indicate you want bolded, italicized text, but don’t put in the </i></b>, you get bolded, italicized text that continues until the end of the post, which is embarassing unless you’re doing it deliberately, as I am here. Alternatively, you may get a snarky message from the website, telling you that you didn’t close the tag.
PROTIP: Use the preview function, ALWAYS, if there is a working preview available.
The code for a link is <a href=”the URL you wish to link to”>the text that will show up in blue</a>.
Stephen St. Onge:
Thanks!