Quoting a small part of a long post

Sometimes I only want to respond to one part of a lengthy post. Usually what I do is hit the button to reply to the post, then hit the quote button (the word balloon) to display the entire post, then I will selectively delete what I don’t want. Which can get tedious at times.

Today I discovered a shortcut. I’m probably the last person to figure it out, but thought I’d share in case someone else finds it helpful.

Instead of hitting the reply button, just select the part of the post you want to quote. Along with the usual cut/copy/paste/select all options, a “quote” button will pop up. Hit that, and it opens a reply box with your selected text already quoted. Pretty slick!

I’m sure you’re not the last to figure it out, so thank you for sharing. It will probably help others.

Works for nesting quotes as well.

The “highlight and quote” does not work well if there’s any coding, like equations E=mc^2.

Like so…

It can also get tricky when you’re trying to quote text that’s been spoilered …
clicking on it toggles between spoilered/unspoilered.

Arguably, it still works relatively well.

:wink:

Nothing really works well for quoting equations. MathJax and Discourse were not designed for use with each other.

Something I would also like to point out is that if you quote an entire post, Discourse will delete your quote. But if you selectively quote only part of the post, it won’t. That’s a very objective reason to do a partial quote.

I, for one, didn’t know, and I really appreciate you posting this! Thank you!

You’re not the last as in “final”,

But you are the most recent. :wink:

Only if it’s the post directly above your post, otherwise it works fine.

Let’s test it, I’ll quote the entirety of the OP.

Testing a full quote.

ETA: I’ll be damned, I thought it always stripped the quote and just put a tag to the previous quote.

I was the other way around. I couldn’t understand why people kept saying Discourse cut off quotes until I quoted one right above mine and - boom- that’s what they are talking about!

Leaving out or adding a period or exclamation point (any change) is a workaround.

But that could change the meaning of the post and get you warned. :wink:

Better to add a non-breaking space with   at the end of the post.

I normally leave the period off the end. What happens if I add a space?
ETA, that worked. I think that’ll be my new way to do that.

Or maybe you could, you know, take the strong hint and not quote the entire thing, since it’s almost never necessary when that post is the one right above yours. I qualified that with “almost” but maybe somebody more pedantic than I can actually think of a reason.

Discourse makes a lot of ‘strong hints’, many of which are wrong.