I see that a lot of the bolding errors are seemingly caused not simply by failing to close a [**b] tag but by using the quote function and forgetting to delete the first one.
Is this really necessary? After all, the text is already set apart from the rest by the [**quote] tag itself…
Just a thought from someone who manages to do it all the time 
Unfortunately, it would be very diffcult for the SDMB to start changing the core templates and php code to do this at this point - and they are very reluctant to do any changes, in fact.
Since I’d seen others do it, I had assumed you were supposed to leave the {B} in place. It bothered me, but I thought it was just one of my quirks. Now it makes sense. Glad you made the point erislover, I will follow your instructions from now on. Thanks.
kniz, just for your information, if you want to display [b] instead of {b} use the following code [[i**][/i]b].
ObiWan,
I just looked at the coding you used for that sentence, and my brain exploded!
Mine too. Looked like line noise. Gah.
You can also just type [ b ].