Bolding in Quotes

Factual Questions
1

I thought about posting this in ATMB, but then I realized that this seems to be a question about browsers or how VB works, and not the administration of SDMB. So here it is.

People here often quote someone and follow it with “Bolding mine.” But nothing in their quote is bolded. Quite some time ago, I found that if you use the quote=username tag, the bold tag doesn’t work. For instance:

But if you use the plain quote tag, without specifying the username, the formatting shows up, thus:

The fact that the bold tag doesn’t work is visible in preview. (Interestingly, the underline tag works inside both types of quote.)

But people keep doing it, and what is more, I’ve never seen anyone say in a later post, “Oh, the bolding didn’t show up,” nor have I seen other people say, “How come I can’t see the bolding?” Which leads me to believe that some people, maybe most, can see the bolding.

So is it just me? I’m using WinXP, and neither Mozilla nor IE show me the bolding. So are all of you using Macs or Opera or a less common browser, or is something else going on that I don’t understand? Am I losing my mind?

2

It currently shows up for me and I’m using Firefox on Windows XP. It also shows up when I’m using Opera and Firefox and other browsers (Konqueror among them) on Linux.

Maybe you’ve picked a bad default font?

3

Also using Firefox, and also seeing the bolding in both quotes, and have never noticed it not showing up in other people’s quotes.

Added italics, on the other hand, don’t show up in quotes for obvious reasons.

4

Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with Derleth’s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.

5

Here’s some stuff to test: Bold, Italics, Bolded Italics

I agree that it’s related to your font somehow. The relevant difference is that attributed quotes are displayed in italics - regular quotes aren’t.

6

For show and tell, I’m changing the ] [ to } {
…

{QUOTE=TellMeI’mNotCrazy}Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/QUOTE} < — this is defaul produced by the board when normal reply with quote is used.

{QUOTE}Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/QUOTE} <— default but erased the equal sign and screen name …

{quote}Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/quote} <----- used my quotes and the boards bolding …

[quote=Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with Derleth’s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.[/quote]

{quote=Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/quote} <— I just left off the user name and right hand tag tag on the opening quote so it used the first first right handed tag it came to which was on the opening bold bracketts on the Derleth name.

{quote= xxxx} Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/quote} <---- used home grown equals sign and screen name and got default output.

{quote}{B}Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}erleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/b}{/quote} <----- If bolding is added at the start and stop, the other bold tags inside won’t do anything.

{QUOTE=TellMeI’mNotCrazy}{B}Just opened the page in IE, and it showed fine there for me as well, so I’m inclined to agree with {B}Derleth{/B}'s guess of a screwy default font that doesn’t show bolded italics or something.{/B}{/QUOTE} < — this is defaul produced by the board when normal reply with quote is used but added bold tags are used.

Need to keep an eye on what is in the quoted part.
Hope this helped…

7

Okay, I found it.

I’ve never diddled with the font setttings, so my default sans serif is Arial, which I believe is the Windows default. I was about to go in and change fonts when I thought of simply changing the font size.

Sure enough, one click larger or smaller and the bolded italics show up clearly as bolded. I guess it is a combination of screen resolution and font characteristics, and I just happened to have started with a size in which there’s no difference. Annoyingly, it is the most comfortable one for both my computers. I’ll try out some alternative font/size combinations to see if I can find one that works as well.

I’m a little chagrinned that I didn’t figure this out for myself. For a long time I would quietly snicker to myself when I saw people “futilely” trying to bold within quotes. Eventually I realized that no one was noticing that it didn’t work, and it dawned on me that maybe it was a problem at my end, not theirs. But even as I was typing up the OP last night, and noticed that the issue was bold + italic, it didn’t occur to me to try the simplest possible change to my own settings. I was convinced that the problem must be external. :smack:

Anyway, thanks for all your help.