How to code selective quotes, and other text effects
 

Here is a step-by-step guide written by Ian on how place comments in the middle of a quoted passage without having it appear as if your comments are part of the original quote:


If you use the "Quote" button at the bottom of each post to reply in a thread, it will generate the all of the material within that post and attribute it to the person who posted the comments.

The "tags" that appear before and after the quoted material look like this, except I have replaced the square brackets [ ] with curly brackets { } so that you can see the structure of the UBL code (otherwise the code would be translated and you would see the quote as it usually appears).

{QUOTE=Ian}Quoted material appears here in italics to indicate it is not regular discussion material.{/QUOTE}

If anybody else types new material between the two "tags," it will be included in the quoted format -- which might confuse the reader about who said what.

The way to avoid this confusion and have interspersed comments appear between the actual quoted text is to use the "tags" above and customize the formatting like this. Again, I am using curly brackets { } to illustrate the code, you need to replace those with square brackets when you use this method [ ].

Click "Quote" to initiate the reply to a given post.

{QUOTE=Ian}Place the first part of the quote you wish to reply to after the "start tag" as already provided by the "Quote" formatting and insert the "end tag" ater the material you wish to respond to.{/QUOTE}

Type your comments to the first quote here.

Insert the "start tag" here for the next section of quoted material {QUOTE}. Follow this with the second piece of quoted material, and end it with the "end tag."{/QUOTE}

Insert your comments to the second quote here.

And so on, building as many quoted sections and replies as you wish. I think this method makes it easier for the reader to distinguish the quoted material from the responses, and I hope that the brief decription above helps those who are unfamiliar with how the formatting codes work.

It is okay to remove pieces of the quoted material that you do not wish to respond to, but it is customary to indicate that material has been removed by inserting three periods in a row "..." (referred to in English as an ellipsis) where such material has been deleted from the original quote. Again, in the interests of clarity, it is good practice to show what you have left out of the original quote in this manner. Also, it can help avoid the author of the original quote being upset because you have managed to change his meaning or left out what he thinks are the most important points in what he said.

Clarity and accuracy when quoting others are important to good communication and for avoiding potential unpleasantries.

Thanks again to Marto for raising this question, and I hope these comments are helpful.

Ian.

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To show how this looks in a thread, here is the above example where the curly brackets are replaced by the correct format with square brackets.


Type your comments to the first quote here.

Insert the "start tag" here for the next section of quoted material

Insert your comments to the second quote here.

More HTML coding How-To
 

The coding used on the bulletin board -- called HTML -- is pretty simple, once you get the "logic" of it. Everthing is between square brackets, there is a pretty intuitive command for each thing, and the code always ends with the same command preceeded by a backwards slash /

Some examples, changing square to squiggly brackets so you can see it:

image code is IMG, coded {IMG}URL-of-image{/IMG}

link code is URL, coded {URL}address-of-web-page{/URL}

fancy link code is URL=http://www.text-of-the-link.com, then you put in some text that becomes the link, like this. The coding, changing square to squiggly brackets so you can see it, is {url=http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=77}like this{/url} I usually copy the URL from the address box of my browser.

italics command is I, coded {I}text-to-be-italicized{/I}

underline command is U, coded {U}text-to-be-underlined{/U}

bold command is B, coded {B}text-to-be-bolded{/B}

The command can actually be either in capitals or in lower case letters.

Here is a link to a page on the old UBB board, explaining how to add HTML coding to a message, and giving more codes.