All About Quoting Other Posts

[Helene]

(I originally posted this on another thread, but it was an interruption and really belongs here.)

The basics:

1. To quote a single post, click the " Reply button at the bottom of the post.

The entire post will be quoted, along with the quote formatting elements. You may edit out anything of the quote between the

and the "end-quote"

, as long as you leave these two elements intact, which includes the brackets and slashes ([, [/, and ]) at the beginning and the end, and you don't add carriage returns between the "begin" and "end" quotes and the quoted text. An "end quote" must always have a forward slash ("/") after the opening bracket.

2. To quote multiple posts, click the "+ quote" button for each post -- the button will turn red and read "- quote", and then click the "Add Reply" button at the bottom of the thread.

More complicated:

1. "Nested" quotes. If a post is quoted, and that post includes a quote, the posts will be nested. To be formatted properly, these must included a "begin quote"

for each quote. These will be added by the software, but it's critical to leave a pair for each quote you want to retain.

Example:

Poster A's post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

Poster B's post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

2. Breaking up a single quote into multiple quotes:

If you click " " Reply", the post will look like this in the edit box:

Point 1: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

Point 2: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

Point 3: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

To break up a quote, each part of the quote needs to have

at the beginning of each part, and

at the end of each part.

For example:

Point 1: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

RESPONSE to Point 1.

Point 2: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

RESPONSE to Point 2.

Point 3: Post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text post text.

RESPONSE to Point 3

Added by software

Added by you

Troubleshooting:

If the post won't format quotes properly, there are usually three issues that cause this:

1. There isn't an even number of "begin quote"s --

-- and "end quote"s --

.

Example A:

Poster A text, text, text, text

Poster B Quote, quote, quote

Example B:

text, text, text, text

. (Notice that "

" is missing the forward slash, that indicates "end")

Should be:

text, text, text, text[/quote]

2. There is a carriage return between the "begin quote" and the text and/or the text and the "end quote."

Examples:

text, text, text

OR

text text text text

3. There is a missing bracket:

which should be:

'][/b]text, text, text, text