Formatting question

September 4, 2003 6:08 AM

You'd think that someone with an under 8000 user number would know this, but, to my great shame, I don't.
Is the only way to format text in a post to use html tags, or is there some super-secret, tell no one, y'oughta know this already, other method of formatting (I dunno, some weird macro type syntax or something)?
posted by jpburns to MetaFilter-Related at 6:08 AM (32 comments total)

So I'm assuming you don't know the secret handshake, either.
posted by bshort at 6:31 AM on September 4, 2003

"The first rule of formatting club is..."

Ahh, the hell with that. It's a decayed corpse of a Meta-cliche.
posted by Shane at 7:11 AM on September 4, 2003

I'm pretty sure it involves using only the letters of the last word of the previous post...
posted by crunchland at 7:21 AM on September 4, 2003

Why do you need to know?
posted by ashbury at 8:20 AM on September 4, 2003

You obviously have not had enough gin & tonics.
posted by Dagobert at 8:35 AM on September 4, 2003

If you're using IE for Windows, there are Bold, Italic and link buttons for formatting. They're not available in most other browsers due to javascript differences.

Other than that, I don't know of anything but good old HTML.
posted by timeistight at 8:41 AM on September 4, 2003

Well, <small> isn't good old HTML.
posted by yerfatma at 8:46 AM on September 4, 2003

Maybe style tags could be used, but that seems silly.

yerfatma, you're using the html tag for small, aren't you? HOw does that make it not good old html?
posted by ashbury at 8:49 AM on September 4, 2003

Well, <small> isn't good old HTML.

Since 3.2 at least.
posted by timeistight at 9:13 AM on September 4, 2003

Is there a list somewhere of which tags are allowed and which aren't? I was going to write that <SMALL> had been deprecated in HTML 4.0, but apparently that's not the case. Why wasn't this CSS-replaced tag deprecated when they deprecated <U>?
posted by vraxoin at 9:14 AM on September 4, 2003

Regarding the first few replies: Ha! Ha! Ha!

No, really!

Actually, a list of MetaFilter accepted tags would be a good thing.

Shame about that Windows IE only thing. Bastards!
posted by jpburns at 9:54 AM on September 4, 2003

I'm pretty darn sure the buttons work in Moz now.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 10:11 AM on September 4, 2003

yeppers, at least in 1.4
posted by poopy at 10:33 AM on September 4, 2003

<div style="background-color:#009900;padding:5px;margin:2px;border:3px dotted #FF0000;">Yeah, a <blink>list of accepted tags</blink> would be <em>very useful indeed</em>. I'm <span style="font-family:serif;font-size:200px;">tired</span> of always doing it via <marquee>trial and error</marquee>.</div>
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:50 AM on September 4, 2003

Huh, news to me— I guess I assumed any readily-readable tag (other than the fairly obscure ones) would be made-up. Pardon my ignorance. Please accept this textbox XHTML validator bookmarklet as a small penance.
posted by yerfatma at 11:26 AM on September 4, 2003

and actually,
tags are not needed. carriage returns are retained, at least on IE6 Win2k.
posted by quonsar at 11:30 AM on September 4, 2003

oops, hahah, that should read "actually <br> tags are not needed"
posted by quonsar at 11:31 AM on September 4, 2003

I'm pretty darn sure the buttons work in Moz now.

yes they do
posted by matteo at 4:04 PM on September 4, 2003

I was going to write that <SMALL> had been deprecated in HTML 4.0, but apparently that's not the case. Why wasn't this CSS-replaced tag deprecated when they deprecated <U>?

Because the <small> tag is cool.
posted by weston at 5:22 PM on September 4, 2003

A few more:

<blockquote> works,

as do <sup>, <sub>, <hr>

---

and <img>.


posted by cbrody at 6:31 PM on September 4, 2003

We should be using ReStructured Text (ReST). It's a formalized ASCII markup set that reads very much like old-school EMail:

Headline
======

Subhead
-----------

Paragraphs can contain inline *italics*, **bold**, `monospace`, http://urls.ca, etcetera.

Block-indented text (block quotes) are dead easy, too.

Definitions:

Are simple.

* As are bullets.

* And indented bullets, even.

And so on. It's easy and intuitive.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:20 PM on September 4, 2003

timeistight, small is listed as a valid tag by the document you linked to. Am I missing your point?
posted by NortonDC at 8:58 PM on September 4, 2003

I guess so. My point was that <small> has been "good old HTML" since at least 3.2, if not earlier.
posted by timeistight at 9:27 PM on September 4, 2003

I can't imagine a page of MetaFilter comments without the <small> tag.

However, woe unto anyone who uses the <big> tag.
Even if it was only to approximate and therefore comment on the headline style of the New York Post!

Yeah, I still haven't gotten over it. A little...
posted by wendell at 12:41 AM on September 5, 2003

Why isn't there a "tiny" tag?

I hate having to write <small><small>Just to make type tiny.</small></small>
posted by jpburns at 9:24 AM on September 5, 2003

I didn't know that...

small 1x

small 2x

small is a funny-looking word when you write it 3x over

i think I'll leave the tags open, and see if MeFi has a small bug...
posted by five fresh fish at 9:43 AM on September 5, 2003

I always thought it should be "small" "smaller" "smallest". I blame Sesame Street.
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posted by taz at 3:54 AM on September 6, 2003

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posted by five fresh fish at 8:31 AM on September 6, 2003