Bold Tag Etiquette

March 26, 2002 2:46 PM

Overusing the bold tag. As the number of front page posts have grown, some posters have felt the need to yell to be heard. I think this is a troubling trend, and I'd like it to stop. What is the community consensus?
posted by gd779 to etiquette/policy at 2:46 PM (19 comments total)

I'm going to agree that the bold in these posts is suboptimal.

Two of the links you show bold actual quotes from the articles they link to. I think that this technique is better than italics, because it's more readable...

Since we frown upon putting paragraph breaks on the homepage, I'm not sure what the solution is.

Perhaps just better use of the "more inside" customary structure used to denote "I've got more to say but I'll be rambling if I put it on the home page.

on a side note, I sure am glad *I* never post to the home page.
posted by zpousman at 3:07 PM on March 26, 2002

Thank God you didn't mean me! My name is Miguel and I'm a boldaholic....
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:30 PM on March 26, 2002

fuck you die.

just kidding. had to do it before anyone else did.
posted by jcterminal at 3:35 PM on March 26, 2002

BOLDROCKS!
posted by aaron at 4:52 PM on March 26, 2002

now that needs to be in a front page post.
posted by eyeballkid at 5:30 PM on March 26, 2002

Aaron gets better and better - it's a rule of life, like the second law of thermodynamics. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:55 PM on March 26, 2002

In the two posts that bolded a quote, I just consider that misuse of the tag. The fact that the text was taken from the article/page already lends it emphasis, in my opinion. You just need to put quotes around it. Everybody knows what those are and what they mean. If you feel like italicising them, fine. The quotes shouldn't be so long as for that to become a distraction, anyway, but I generally only see italics used for that purpose inside threads themselves as a sort of shortcut.

As for Y2karl's post, I have no idea what the hell he was thinking *grin*
posted by Su at 6:20 PM on March 26, 2002

I'm going to agree that the bold in these posts is suboptimal.

God, you never know what you're gonna be famous for.
posted by rodii at 6:44 PM on March 26, 2002

As "troubling trends" go, overuse of the bold tag is pretty far down the list...

I actually kind of liked y2karl's use of it -- felt kind of like a pullquote: one attention-grabbing sentence that summarized the post as a whole.
posted by ook at 7:36 PM on March 26, 2002

Suboptimal bold tag use? Call the Pastel Suit Jackals!
posted by jonmc at 7:57 PM on March 26, 2002

Call the Pastel Suit Jackals

OK, this references:

thank god for the preview funcion, i almost said pastel suit jackals.

as posted at 8:10 pst on 3/25/2002 in a Metatalk thread. Less than 24 hours later a google search on Pastel Suit Jackals results in that MeTa thread as #1.

Perhaps this is a new game: Googlestorming™ - having your page be #1 on google for a given search term in under 24 hours?

posted by dchase at 8:25 PM on March 26, 2002

I hope JCTerminal is enjoying his taste of immortality.
posted by jonmc at 8:43 PM on March 26, 2002

So I'm appearantly the only one who interprets bold as "yelling at the top of my lungs". I guess if nobody else is bothered, it's not a big deal.
posted by gd779 at 4:04 AM on March 27, 2002

like sweet, sweet candy.
posted by jcterminal at 4:14 AM on March 27, 2002

This isn't yelling, and neither is this. THIS IS YELLING,

THIS IS YELLING LOUDER, and

THIS IS YELLING SO LOUD THAT IT'S GONE OFF THE RICHTER SCALE.

But I agree that bold tags should be used sparingly on the front page. And triple-big bold italics would definitely be overdoing it.
posted by rory at 5:27 AM on March 27, 2002

ouch, sorry -- I honestly didn't know the use of bold for a quoted phrase was even controversial. I've never interpreted it as yelling (unlike caps). My goal was to attract attention to a particular quote that I thought might otherwise be lost in what was obviously a fairly long post.

And it was a double post to boot. I knew I never should have posted that, damnit.

(oops, sorry for the bold!)
posted by pardonyou? at 5:55 AM on March 27, 2002

I always consider bold text to be "leaning in a little closer and looking you in the eye" and italic text to be "leaning in a little closer and doing that quote thing with your hands."
posted by ColdChef at 7:00 AM on March 27, 2002

How bout grabbing you by the lapels and shaking you so the loose change falls out of your pockets? Is there a font style for that?
posted by Kafkaesque at 8:46 AM on March 27, 2002

Kafka: I think that would involve bold, italics, and also the blink tag *grin*
posted by Su at 11:32 AM on March 27, 2002