# On quotes and spoiler tags

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-quotes-and-spoiler-tags/230522>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [February 22, 2004, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-quotes-and-spoiler-tags/230522 "2004-02-22T19:23:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2004, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-quotes-and-spoiler-tags/230522/1 "2004-02-22T19:23:14Z")

</div>

I just discovered a weird… well, I’m not sure it’s properly a “bug”, but call it a “quirk”, that folks should be aware of. In a recent [Cafe Society thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4570122#post4570122) (warning: Minor spoiler for the X-men 2 movie accidentally revealed), I wanted to respond to something that **Ranchoth** had said in a spoiler tag. To preserve the spoiler, I also wanted to put my reply in a spoiler tag. So I opened one spoiler tag, put in the quote and my reply, and then closed the spoiler tag. But when it posted, the quoted material was in normal (readable) color. For those not wanting to open the linked thread, it went something like this:

[spoiler]

> [@](#):
>
> Quoted text here (visible)

My response (properly hidden) here[/spoiler]

(what I typed to get that was [spoiler]

> [@](#):
>
> Quoted text here (visible)

My response (properly hidden) here[/spoiler]

I don’t know if this issue is browser-dependant; I’m using Mozilla 1.1 on Mac OSX.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2004, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-quotes-and-spoiler-tags/230522/2 "2004-02-22T19:28:22Z")

</div>

Windows XP Pro, IE 6.0. I can see the quoted material in the spoiler box as well. Does anyone know if this was an issue on the old version, too? I don’t recall ever encountering quoted text within a spoiler box until now.

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**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-quotes-and-spoiler-tags/230522/3 "2004-02-22T19:44:31Z")

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This should be relatively browser-independent.  
The styles on the generated pages set an explicit background color for the “content” section of quotes, regardless of context.

Within the stylesheet:

```auto

.alt2, .alt2Active
{
	background: #F8F8F8;
	color: #000000;
}

```

The actual quote:

```auto

		<td class="alt2" style="border:1px inset">

			
				Quoted text here (visible)
			
		</td>

```

(both taken from this thread page)