Another unclosed italics tag

September 3, 2002 3:19 PM

Rats. I tried to post a link in all italics (with apologies to DaveAdams), and ended up italicizing everything. I realize that this has happened before and apologize for this breech in link editing.

Is there a way for a user to edit one of their own links after posting without having to bother Matt?
posted by Joey Michaels to Feature Requests at 3:19 PM (15 comments total)

Nope
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:21 PM on September 3, 2002

I assume my immediate subsequent MeTa post will be deleted so here's my comment:

trox seems to have closed Joey's open italics tag in this thread, but right now the entire front page is in italics for me. Was this a bug in the automatic tag-closing I've seen in my previews?
posted by mediareport at 3:22 PM on September 3, 2002

That's a shame. Well, my apologies again.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:23 PM on September 3, 2002

It appears to be fixed now... thanks Matt.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:24 PM on September 3, 2002

I wasn't running the tag closer on the URL description field, or it would have caught the gaffe. Since you italicized the entire post, you probably missed it in preview, but you can never be too careful.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:25 PM on September 3, 2002

I will be more careful in the future. Thanks again.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:26 PM on September 3, 2002

Was there some reason you wanted to italicize the initial URL, Joey, or was that just a mistake? Timely post, btw. ;)
posted by mediareport at 3:27 PM on September 3, 2002

Well, the "link title" is a quote from the article as well. Thus, I figured the proper way to attribute the quote to the link (at least according to my understanding of MeFi style) would be to italicize the title.

I added three words to the title ("student drug users") and the date in brackets in the body of the link description, but that hardly makes it my work.
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:36 PM on September 3, 2002

Quote marks would work fine in that situation, wouldn't they? They're much less busy to the eye on the front page. It's ok for formal style to sometimes get trumped for practical considerations, you know? Keeping the front page less busy for thousands of readers (read: minimal use of italics, bold, etc) seems to me one of those times.
posted by mediareport at 4:05 PM on September 3, 2002

That is a sound and reasonable suggestion. Thank you for the good advice!
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:20 PM on September 3, 2002

Joey, you've ruined MetaFilter for all time, never come back! Italicized links -- the nerve! If I had jowls, they'd be quivering with indignant rage!

Oh, who am I kidding.. I have jowls, they just don't quiver so much no more. You win... this time.
posted by Hildago at 4:42 PM on September 3, 2002

The correct HTML way to attribute the quote, since it "Contains a citation or a reference to other sources," would be to use the CITE tag. If Matt would add "cite {font-style:italic;}" to the style sheet, the citations would be italicized, too.

posted by kirkaracha at 4:54 PM on September 3, 2002

Since you italicized the entire post, you probably missed it in preview,

I can't find it, but there was some metatalk post where I think you came up with the idea of having a dummy comment following so you could see if you'd left any tags open.

Feel free to use this dummy comment.
posted by holloway at 5:36 PM on September 3, 2002

That is a sound and reasonable suggestion. Thank you for the good advice!

I think I'm falling in love.
posted by mediareport at 8:58 PM on September 3, 2002

Thank you for the good advice!

Oh Jesus

posted by matteo at 4:39 AM on September 4, 2002