I tried to make a list where I counted down songs from number 10 to number 1. Apparently the software saw the 10 and decided that I really meant to type 11, 12, 13 etc. and overrode what I had entered. I thought I had possibly tripped the numbering thing by accident so I switched it on and off…no joy.
That kind of thing drives me nuts. Whether it’s here, reddit, Excel, Thunderbird, Word etc. I really wish the programs would either require some type of ‘trigger’ to auto format or there was some easy way to disable it.
The problem I’ve been running into lately, specifically with emails, is when I copy from one place and paste to an email it keeps the formatting and there’s a lot of times where I can’t, for the life of me, fix it. Just the other day one of my emails had a C&P’d section in the middle somewhere and everything beyond that was in a bigger and different font, even though it showed everything to be the same size/font/style etc.
Sometimes I can circumvent that by first pasting and recopying elsewhere, like URL bar, but even that doesn’t always work.
And, to go back to the OP, sometimes putting a “)” after numbers makes it start auto counting. Sometimes putting a period after a 1 does it and then all the formatting is messed up.
I’m so used to a lot of this now, I’m worried if I turn everything off, it’ll break other things. I just need a quick way to knock it off for what I’m doing at that moment.
The auto numbering feature here at the new SDMB triggers off seeing a number, even a multi-digit number, followed by a “.”. So you can solve the problem by not doing that. If you really want you rlist to include "."s after the number then you need to switch to plan B. Which is … In general in Discourse to disable a symbol from doing something magic, precede it by the “escape character” which is backslash = \.
To fool the auto numbers feature of a numbered list using “.” as the punctuation, just put \ after the first number before your punctuation. It’ll also be required if you number one of your items with “1”
4. There’s a single \ between the “4” and the “.”. That’s needed because this is the first numbered paragraph in a group of numbered paragraphs.
3. This line doesn’t need that \ but it won’t hurt to include it.
2. This line doesn’t need that \ either.
1. This line DOES need a single \ between the “1” and the “.”. That’s needed because this paragraph is numbered as “1”.
Or just use colons instead of periods:
4: No special secret codes hidden here. What I typed is what you see.
3: Same as line 4.
2: Same as line 3.
1: Same as line 2.
Or use no colon and no “.”
4 No special secret codes hidden here. What I typed is what you see.
3 Same as line 4.
2 Same as line 3.
1 Same as line 2.
Easy peasy once you know the trick.
Also, questions about how to use the board software belong in ATMB, not IMHO. I’ll report this for forum change.
I could have sworn I posted it there…not sure how it ended up here. Thanks for the answer and reporting it!
As Joey_P says, a list using “)” as punctuation after the number also triggers auto-numbering. The fix is just what I said above for fixing "."s
4) There’s a single \ between the “4” and the “)”. That’s needed because this is the first numbered paragraph in a group of numbered paragraphs.
3) This line doesn’t need that \ but it won’t hurt to include it.
2) This line doesn’t need that \ either.
1) This line DOES need a single \ between the “1” and the “)". That’s needed because this paragraph is numbered as “1”.
There are many browser extensions that give you the option of copying as plain text.
(Or copy and paste to a text editor - but that’s more cumbersome.)
Moved to ATMB (from IMHO).