i don't know how to quote

[madman]

I saw a couple of threads regarding this problem. one was close to helping me. this makes me crazy as I learned how to do it a year ago and now I forgot. I clicked on a dialogue box then I clicked quote under the part I wanted to respond to. then I erased everything I didn't want in the quote. then I clicked on preview post to get some options. then I get a quote box with the quote I want but all I can do then is type in it. my post ends up being part of the quote. i'm freakin furious! i'm doubly upset cuz I start a thread and want to reply in real time and don't know how to do it. I need help. this is the only forum I've been on so i'm wildly inexperienced. thanks for your help and your patience, gary

[Ranko Kohime]

I saw a couple of threads regarding this problem. one was close to helping me. this makes me crazy as I learned how to do it a year ago and now I forgot. I clicked on a dialogue box then I clicked quote under the part I wanted to respond to. then I erased everything I didn't want in the quote. then I clicked on preview post to get some options. then I get a quote box with the quote I want but all I can do then is type in it. my post ends up being part of the quote. i'm freakin furious! i'm doubly upset cuz I start a thread and want to reply in real time and don't know how to do it. I need help. this is the only forum I've been on so i'm wildly inexperienced. thanks for your help and your patience, gary

This forum has similar conventions to practically every other forum on the Internet, with a WYSIWYG interface (which stands for What You See Is What You Get), which was originally designed to present a more user-friendly interface, but it ends up being very much like the Wizard of Oz, hiding the easily-dealt-with bits behind a curtain.

 

The particular implementation this forum uses is far from the best implementation, and I have strong words for even the best implementations of this interface.

 

The alternative to this, and the only one that I personally use (stick in the mud that I am), is the traditional interface, which you can access by clicking the switch icon in the upper left hand corner of the posting window. The other icons will turn grey in this mode, and you'll be able to see behind the curtain.

 

A quote is wrapped in tags, which begin and end with square brackets. So, as I'm writing this my quote of your post begins with

[quote name="madman" post="422391" timestamp="1452021575"]

and ends with

[/quote]

The first is an opening tag. The opening tag has extra information in it which fills in the top bar of the quote, though this isn't required. It just makes it look nice.

This is a quote without the extra information, which is simply done with [ quote ]

The second is a closing tag, and closing tags have a forward slash ( / ) in between the square bracket and the text of the tag.

 

With a little copy and paste, you can even break down a larger quote into smaller pieces that you can comment on individually.

 

I hope this has helped.

 

P.S., perhaps you might want to follow this thread, by clicking the button to the right of the topic, and then if you happen to forget again, you can click on your name at the top, and click "Content I follow", which will let you quickly find the topic again.