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How to format comments like a pro — 26 Comments

  1. 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:

    Higgelty Piggelty, Edward M. Kennedy
    Quote unaccountably drove in a stream.
    Pleas of amnesia,
    Incomprehensible!
    Possibly shattered political dreams.

    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.

  2. Jodi certainly knows how to bold and add web page links. No wonder she earns $15,000 a month!

  3. 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?

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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?

  7. 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.

  8. >< are commonly called angle brackets by the programming folks as apposed to square [] round () and curly {}

  9. 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. Strikeout word.

    a quote

  10. Where I come / came from,
    [ ] , ( ) , and { } are brackets, parentheses, and braces, respectively.
    Y M M V . . .

  11. 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

  12. Martin, we see Curly, but what happened to Moe and Larry?
    They were in a bracket by themselves, and had all kinds of angles.

  13. 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.

  14. 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)

  15. … and to confuse things, if you are keeping score at home, “strikeout” is”K”.

    Dana should be recognized for her timing. 🙂

  16. A long time ago the html codes used to appear near the “Leave a Reply” line.

  17.         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.

  18.         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.

  19.         The code for a link is <a href=”the URL you wish to link to”>the text that will show up in blue</a>.

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