Page 1 of 1

Quoting previous posts

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 10:06 am
by Clockwork Ghost
Please be sensible when quoting previous posts - don't just copy everything the previous person has written, be selective and use only the part of the post you are referencing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to scroll through pages of quoted text just to get to your comments.

Thank you [thumbup]

Re: Quoting previous posts

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 3:06 pm
by EternalReturn
I would like to add a short tutorial on quoting the text, as I have seen some people struggling with it.

Forum has a way to differentiate between certain parts. It has a variety of delimiters, or you can call them tags. You can imagine them in the form a box. If you want to quote a part of text you can use this "boxes" to make it so.

Code: Select all

[tag] Some text [/tag]
It usually looks like this. This could be called a prototype. Just replace tag with the desired keyword to achieve the effect. It could also be i for italic letters, or code for this box above, url for links etc. Formatting text is based on this rule.


Keywords surrounded with [] are called tags.

There is always a pair - opening tag and closing tag. Closing tag always come with forward slash.


So what you're basically doing, you're putting some text in some boxes with their specific labels. Forum reads that label, and draws them as instructed. So if I put Clockwork_Ghost's quote in code tags, it forum will draw it like this:
Clockwork_Ghost wrote:Please be sensible when quoting previous posts - don't just copy everything the previous person has written, be selective and use only the part of the post you are referencing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to scroll through pages of quoted text just to get to your comments.

Thank you [thumbup]
In the editor it looks like this:

Code: Select all

[quote="Clockwork_Ghost"]Please be sensible when quoting previous posts - don't just copy everything the previous person has written, be selective and use only the part of the post you are referencing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to scroll through pages of quoted text just to get to your comments.

Thank you  [thumbup][/quote]
This is the way it looks in the editor. But as you can see, quote has an equals sign and a name of the user. It basically says, this quote is is from the specified user. In this case it's Clockwork_Ghost. Should it be say, Nahemah it would look like this:

Code: Select all

[quote="Nahemah"]Some quoted text from Nahemah[/quote]
So if you'd like to quote a certain part of text and comment, then do that with the other part of the text, be sure that text you want to quote is inside these tags. You can write it by hand, or you can select some text and click on the Quote button on the top of the editor. Copy and paste are very helpful here.

Example:

Code: Select all

[quote="Clockwork_Ghost"]Please be sensible when quoting previous posts - don't just copy everything the previous person has written, [/quote]

Some comment.

[quote="Clockwork_Ghost"]
be selective and use only the part of the post you are referencing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to scroll through pages of quoted text just to get to your comments.

Thank you  [thumbup][/quote]

Other comment.

And that will look like this:
Clockwork_Ghost wrote:Please be sensible when quoting previous posts - don't just copy everything the previous person has written,
Some comment.
Clockwork_Ghost wrote: be selective and use only the part of the post you are referencing. I don't know about you, but I don't want to have to scroll through pages of quoted text just to get to your comments.

Thank you [thumbup]
Other comment.


Warning though - if you use the Quote button and do not add ="Name", it will be a blind quote:
Some readers would be confused with this as they don't know from which user this quote came from.

What if there are multiple people who I would like to quote?

I do it this way. Quote the first person, select all, copy. Quote the other person, paste the quote of the first person below, select both quotes, copy. If there are more people you'd like to quote, just do the same thing again.

Careful though. It can be easy to lose yourself in all this text. Divide the parts by putting some whitespace between or mowing them to the other row.

Example:

Code: Select all

[quote="Clockwork_Ghost"]
Some quoted text.
[/quote]

[quote="Nahemah"]
Some quoted text.
[/quote]

[quote="manonthepath"]
Some quoted text.
[/quote]

[quote="RoseRed"]
Some quoted text.
[/quote]

Misc

Quotes can also be used for marking a part of text that has been copied from a book or some other online source like this:

Code: Select all

[quote="From Franz Bardon's Initiation to Hermetics"]Spiritual growth, elemental magic, mysticism.[/quote]
And it will look pretty organized:
From Franz Bardon's Initiation to Hermetics wrote:Spiritual growth, elemental magic, mysticism.
Remember, if you see some text quoting that you don't understand, quote that post, and you will be able to see where the quotes start and end and how to achieve the same effect.

Hope it helps. [thumbup]

Re: Quoting previous posts

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 3:22 pm
by Desecrated
Clockwork_Ghost wrote:Please be sensible when quoting previous posts
I'll try my best.