Ok - it’s 1:46 a.m. and I just spent an hour going through threads in this forum, and I can’t find an answer to my question, so I’m starting my own thread, so I can hurry up and go to bed.
About a million times throughout the forum, when someone replies to someone else without using a quote, and mentions that other person’s name, the name is bolded. Is this an automatic thing, or just something people do so other people can skim the thread and see if their name was mentioned?
That’s it.
Thanks. That’s been bugging me for a while now. It’s like that everywhere, so I thought it was something the board did itself when it recognized a username. I guess this forum is more close-knit than what I thought. That’s a nice feeling, that I just had there. Kinda like one big family here. Ok, now I’m getting sappy. I need to go to bed. 
'Tis the season to be sappy,
Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra."
Bolding names is a tradition. You may ask, how did this tradition get started? I’ll tell you. I don’t know. I do it because everyone else do it.
Because if we did it the other way, Spongemom, it would be pretty freakin’ annoying, wouldn’t it? 
It isn’t just for vanity; a lot of members have user names that are just ordinary words and without bolding, can be misread as such, making the post difficult to understand; Consider:
In the first instance, they’re possibly talking about these - in the second instance, there is less ambiguity.
I signed up here about an hour after **C K ** did, and same answer - Tradition!
(Where’s Zero Mostel when you need him?)
Traditions are nice. I don’t really have anything to say here, just figured I should respond somehow. Thanks for answering me so fast.
I do it to show respect. Even for those who I disagree with or piss me off. If I’m discussing someone, they have a right to be alerted that they are being discussed.
Same here. It’s even to the point now where I flinch if I realize I didn’t bold a user name when I intended to.
It’s a courtesy gesture.
A salute to an equal.
Another reason to do so is that some posters take creative names that would have an unintended double meaning if not cued that ‘here is a user’s name.’ E.g., let’s say posts in the Pit:
“Yeah, your mama doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”
If that followed someone else’s post, that someone else might think that this was an insult of their biological mother, when, in fact, it was a reference to the board member whose name is your mama. They’d be less confusion if everyone saw this:
“Yeah, your mama doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”
Peace.