Tweet The fundamental principle of bolding, quoting etc.

[Mike Gebert]

I've noticed a lot of people having trouble with the buttons which let you quote, bold, italicize, etc.

The trouble always seems to take the same form-- the closing tag doesn't end up in the right place.

Here's how to make sure what you've done is correct: whatever text you want to be affected needs to be precisely between an opening tag:

[B] [quote] [url]

and a closing tag:

[/B] [/quote] [/url]

If your opening tag is somewhere other than at the exact beginning of your text, and your closing tag is somewhere other than at the exact end of your text, move them to those places.

If you've got extra ones floating around, which can happen if you're using the buttons, delete them. You just need one matched pair, like left and right bookends.

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If you want the person's name to appear in the quote, add an equals sign and their name in quotes:

[quote="D.W. Griffith"]Robespierre, the original pussyfooter.[/quote]

The other, simpler way to quote someone automatically is to highlight the text you want to quote within their post, and then click the Quote button at the top of their post. This will automatically put the highlighted text within quotes, with their name, as above, in a new post form for you to add your comments in.

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Likewise, if you want a text link, do the same thing with the URL code, but no quotes:

[url=http://www.kino.com]Kino's website[/url]

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Finally, hit Preview first and see if it all looks like you meant it to.