For some time now, I’ve been meaning to write a post to educate my readers in How To Master Leaving comments. That is, how to use HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), to format your comments, making them easier to follow and read.
Sometimes we like to place emphasis on certain words, to create more expression in what we’re trying to say. A common occurence, is to find people using BLOCK CAPITALS to do this. However, ideally, you should only use uppercase letters in this manner when you want to let someone know you’re SHOUTING at them. Which of course, on this blog, none of you will be doing ;)
So what are the alternatives? Well, there are two ways.
i) You can use bold
ii) You can use italics
iii) You can use bold and italics
Here’s how the above would look when you type it into the comment text area:
i) You can use <b>bold</b>
ii) You can use <i>italics</i>
iii) You can use <b><i>bold and italics</i></b>
It’s as simple as that. Surround the text with the appropriate HTML ‘tags’.
Different Coloured Text
I’m not really sure if this will ever be needed by any of you, but you might like to try it out. Using ’span’ tags, one can change the style of the text, like the colour.
You can write in red, green, darkblue, or whatever colour you want!
This is how you do it:
<span style=”color:red”>This text would be red!</span>
To change the colour, just change the “color:red” to “color:green” or some other common colour.
Hyperlinking
Something else you might like to do, is leave a link to another webpage in the comments. Now the problem with many links, is that they are very long, and what happens is, the link runs out of the comments section, sometimes breaking up the very design of the site. So how do you leave a link (for example) to Armen’s Blog without it coming up like http://www.armensblog.com/ ?
If you were to write, “Google is the biggest search engine in the world”
You would type it into the comments section as,
<a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a> is the biggest search engine in the world
It might look a little confusing if you’ve never done it before, but it’s pretty simple.
There are other ways of formating text like strikethrough and blockquotes, but you don’t really need them most of the time. Hopefully this short tutorial will help you to comment more effectively, and maybe even more frequently!
Added Commentary
By Glenn
on 21.07.07
This is brilliant ! I have always wondered how to do this properly !
Thanks Armen!
By Glenn
on 21.07.07
So how can we use the XHTML tags above here?
I have tried to use them and it was a disaster !
By Armen
on 21.07.07
Glenn - I thought you might like this post :)
The only other tag you’ll possibly like to use, is the ‘blockquote’ tag. Say for instance, you wanted to quote something I said, before making comments on it, you could do this,
Which is done simply by putting ‘blockquote’ and ‘/blockquote’ tags around the text.
The ’strong’ tag is the same as using the bold tag, and ‘em’ is the same as italics.
By Scott
on 21.07.07
Any tips on posting different colored texts?
By Armen
on 21.07.07
Scott - I’m not sure if the span tags are allowed when commenting. I’ll go and check…
Is this text red?
…oh, there you are!! I’ll update the post to show how ;)
By Roman
on 21.07.07
Armen, I like your new formatting of the comments, it’s easier to follow their sequencing, but something is missing (at least at my PC, and maybe it’s my browser’s fault), and that is, the instant WYSIWYG display of one’s comment as it’s being written, and also, the ability to preview before posting. If there’s a typo or other mistake, it’s harder to catch. Did you change this?
By Armen
on 21.07.07
Roman
By stand4truth
on 21.07.07
I love debate. Unfortunately youtube has let me down bigtime,. One day I could debate an issue. The next day i can’t do so because I I don’t have a so called flash player. I go to the Help section. I’m guided by the help desk to solve the problem. Unfortunately I happen to be compuer illiterate. So whatever help it offered was no help at all. So much for a site that is user unfriendly. At least this site works and I will continue to use it for as long as I can So goodbye Youitube youre the loser and welcome God tube.
By alex
on 21.07.07
fsdaf
Haven't you got anything to say?