# Quote of a quote

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [November 10, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049 "2009-11-10T15:42:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 12\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/1 "2009-11-10T15:42:13Z")

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I’m not making this up, am I? In the olden times, if you quoted a poster who had quoted another poster, both quotes would show up in your post, right? Now I only get the post that I’m directly quoting, without the quoted post within the post that I quoted.

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**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/2 "2009-11-10T16:01:48Z")

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Embedded quotes have never happened automatically. There’s a way to do it by hand, which I’ll leave it to someone who does it regularly to explain.

You can get more or less the same effect by choosing multiple quotes – use the little +" button to mark the quotes you want to use (they’ll appear in the order you click), then hit “post reply” and they’ll all be there.

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**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/3 "2009-11-10T16:12:56Z")

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Next time, don’t hit the “Quote” button. Just copy their entire post and paste it into the reply window. Then highlight the whole thing, hit the quote button on your reply box. Then highlight the qouted text and hit the quote button again.

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**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/4 "2009-11-10T16:23:39Z")

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I know how to embed a quote manually, but I thought it used to be automatic here. I guess I’m making this up, and/or confusing this place with another board.

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**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/5 "2009-11-10T16:33:24Z")

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> [@MeanOldLady](#):
>
> I know how to embed a quote manually, but I thought it used to be automatic here. I guess I’m making this up, and/or confusing this place with another board.

Could be – or you could be thinking of PMs here, where it does happen automatically.

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**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/6 "2009-11-10T16:37:38Z")

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> [@MeanOldLady](#):
>
> I know how to embed a quote manually, but I thought it used to be automatic here. I guess I’m making this up, and/or confusing this place with another board.

Nope, way back when, it was automatic, IIRC, but during some vB upgrade the vB folks added the “feature” that stopped it from happening automatically.

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**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/7 "2009-11-10T16:52:52Z")

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Aha! Another non-upgrade upgrade, I see. Fair enough, at least I feel slighly less crazy.

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**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/8 "2009-11-10T17:15:04Z")

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Given the number of people here who will quote an entire ten-paragraph post to reply to a single line of it, I can’t say I’m disappointed that one has to manually nest-quote posts.

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**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/9 "2009-11-10T19:07:49Z")

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Highly annoying when people do that. Highlighting and pressing backspace isn’t hard! The thing I find irritating about not automatically embedding quotes is often people lose track of the conversation. If I want to respond specifically to how a poster responded to somebody else, it’s easy for folks to get lost, especially if all of the responses are many posts apart. The multi-quote feature works fairly well for combating this, though.

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**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/10 "2009-11-10T19:12:49Z")

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> [@MeanOldLady](#):
>
> The thing I find irritating about not automatically embedding quotes is often people lose track of the conversation.

Well, given that each quote links back to the post it came from, it’s obscenely easy to trace a particular thread of conversation back. Most people are just too lazy to do it.

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**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/11 "2009-11-11T00:03:08Z")

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> [@twickster](#):
>
> Embedded quotes have never happened automatically.

Actually, they did for a while, but I don’t remember the exact circumstances or time period.

Here’s a 2004 post that indirectly confirms this (underlining added).

> [@REPORT BAD POST button](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/report-bad-post-button/252055/2):
>
> No person sees the button on any of his or her own posts. In other words, you’re not alone. This is a “feature” new to the current version of vBulletin, like the lack of nested quotes.

But as you said, the relatively new multiquote feature is a workable substitute.

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2009, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/quote-of-a-quote/517049/12 "2009-11-14T14:28:49Z")

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As for doing it manually, I use the multiquote and then move the tags around. Just for fun I copying and pasting into the WYSIWYG editor (click the A button in the upper right corner). It looks like it will work at first, but, on preview, it becomes a gobbled up mess.
