How do I link to a post?

Quick question:

If I’m replying in a thread and want to link to a past individual post from an older thread how do I do that?

[quote=“Hampshire, post:1, topic:536860”]

That’s the same number you’ll see when you mouse-over the “post number” [noparse]http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12367010&postcount=1[/noparse].
Leave off everything after p=########, and change the p= to a ; after the user-name.

So,
[noparse]http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11967039&postcount=1[/noparse]

[quote=“TubaDiva, post:1, topic:524058”]

This gives the link to the post in place in the thread with the cool arrow, one of like six ways to do it.

CMC fnord!

The way I do it is that I load up that old thread, and find the post in question. In the upper right corner of the post, there’s an underlined number; in this post, it should look like this: #3, except greyed-out. Click on that number (it’s a link), and it’ll take you to a page that shows only that post, not the rest of the thread. Use the URL for that page as your link. This is less cool than the people who can link to the post within the larger thread, rather than pulled out of context, but it’s very easy.

  1. On the post you want to link to, right-click on the “#x” post number just to the left of the red triangle in the upper right corner of the post.

  2. Right-click and select “copy link location” (that’s in Firefox–use the equivalent in IE).

  3. Paste into your post.

  4. In the pasted URL, change “showpost” to “showthread”. Also remove “&postcount=” and everything else at the end of the URL.

Another way is to the “post=” vBulletin code. Look it up if you’re interested.