A couple of times recently I have used the dollar sign in posts (I’m hesitant to do it here) and my post comes out with portions italicized and spaces and text deleted. I assume that is some handy dandy coding?
How can I use dollar signs without the software helping me out by fucking up my posts?
I believe that a backslash $ will do the trick.
So type \ followed immediately by “?”
Boy, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand your response. Are you saying that instead of typing “I spent $10k” I should type “I spent \?10k”?
\$ in other words.
$10,000
Preview looks fine.
Yup. There is no issue with just typing a $. You must be doing something else as well. I also just wrote it by itself in that sentence and it’s fine.
So instead of typing $ - which is what I want to say, I have to remember to add an additional character (which I had to search for on my keyboard) to avoid some auto-coding?
Damn - I hate tech. Sure wouldn’t want the persons who WANTED whatever that coding to remember to use the \! 
I think it is when you use multiple $ in a single sentence? Paragraph? Post? I don’t know what triggers it until I hit submit and see a mess of italicized gibberish - which I am unable to edit/correct.
Test
That’s it. If you type two in a row turns to italics. $$$ three is fine
I surrounded it with dollars here.
That’s not just italics – the font changed into a serif font as well.
Is that the mathematical-formula coding?
I never did 2 $ in a row. Instead, it was $text text $text
Somehow, doing something like that had the stuff between the $ italicized.
It’s not something that you’re intended to need often. The formatting in question is in the form $stuff in between$ . As long as you use the dollar sign “normally”, i.e. putting it before a number or letter, you won’t run into it. It’s when the second dollar sign is followed by a space, or so it appears.
And, yes, it is the math coding, which we asked for because it is useful. It uses TeX, which is where the $ stuff comes from.
It happened twice today. One time, I deleted the post and rewrote it. Second time, I just said “fuck it” and deleted the post.
I suppose that is it, but yours is not italicized. I can imagine I used $ alone - followed by a space. Tho I may have mistyped.
Who is the “we” that asked for it and how is it useful?
SYour textS will doo it (where s is ) it shoud have no space between the first and the first word and no space between the 2nd $% and the last word.
Edit never mind I triggered it whilst not meaning to so that’s not quite the rule.
But text text text (now I put the $ at the beginning and at the end, not like you before the last word).
That feature has driven me crazy a couple of times too.
$text text text$ when preceded by \ (which is not the same as /). The \ then turns invisible and makes the $ at the beginning and at the end visible.
Maybe when it happens I mistype and skip a space before the 2d $.
we: this people on this message board.
usefulness: because it allows us to express math formulas. even with colors.
The issue comes up when you type a second $ without a number (or letter) after it in the same paragraph.
$stuff inside$ → stuff inside
$200 and then $400 → $200 and then $400
test:
200 and then addl spent.
On edit: intended “two hundred dollars and then addl dollars spent.”
Once it “corrects” the formatting, I could not figure out how to get rid of it. Makes me fondly recall wordperfect’s “reveal codes” way back when…
I guess I stay out of the colorful math formula threads. Is this really used frequently? Or are you using the royal we? 