Ok, so this IS mundane and pointless, but it also has to do with the board itself, soooo…
Is it just me, or are more and more people making their sigs subscript or superscript? Do I need to get out the magnifying glass? Or am I just getting older? What’s with this trend? Aren’t rhetorical questions cool?
[ul][li]Your question is mundane.[/li][li]Your question is not pointless.[/li][li]It does have to do with the board itself.[/li][/ul]
Ergo, you picked the right forum.
[list][li]It’s not just you.[/li][li]More and more people are making their sigs subscript or superscript.[/li][li]Yes, you need to get out the magnifying glass.[/li][li]Also, you are just getting older.[/li][li]The trend is with growing skills and a desire to use new skills.[/li]Ergo, rhetorical questions are cool.
How do you get sigs? and how do you get small print at all?
I looked on the coding page and it doesn’t say. The FAQ just says
but it doesn’t say how to get them.
I hate it when a person’s sig is 4 inches long and turns out to be longer than their post. When I originally tried my sig, I used normal sized type. It just looked too big. I “subbed” it down and it looked a lot better.
Ma Parrot, you enter it in your profile. Once it’s in you just check the Show Signature box at the bottom of your post.
Never mind. I just realized I’d skipped over the word profile when reading that. Then I realized there was a profile button I’d been ignoring since the first day I got here.
Tommy the Cat yes. Now that I have found the sig, I promise to use only large ones. But I’m guessing the younger posters will still go for the fanciest stuff they can find.
I have my browser set to Larger print for just that kind of thing, like the fine print that says “profile” 
Tommy the Cat sorry, my prior remark on small type was meant for dantheman. It’s so confusing when the board is this slow. You push “reply” and the window comes up with a new post snuck under the post window for you to misquote from.
Anyway, thanks for helping. I think I have it now, and your sig is quite readable, actually. Keep it small. Don’t mind us old grumps. We know it will happen to you soon enough.
If you push reply, you get a completely blank post window, but if you push the quote button directly under the post you’d like to quote, you get that entire quote.
I actually really like Tommy’s sig. Man, I miss The State! But check out the sigs of some other people. They’ll include maybe three or four quotes, all spaced out, and then put in tiny print (sub or super). Ow! Ow! Ow! And I’m only thirty!
I like to see all the funny sigs.
The ones I like best make a little picture.
^^
>…<
///\\
And that great armadillo
Well, since we’re being honest… how does a chap get subscript, exactly? I couldn’t for the life of me find it in the vBCode guide. I’ve spent longer choosing my signature than posting some nights. It’s all about self-promotion! Like my own little website trailer following my every word!
I really would love to use an IMG tag a coupla times but obviously that could get VERY dangerous VERY quickly! They use them over on FFF, though, which I guess is fair cos they’re smaller, right? I love this board. I’ve been more myself here than anywhere else on the web, and while I’ve been pretty roundly debagged for it… I’m happy!
See below. This sig could really do with being a bit more understated, yes?
To get superscript you just use {sup} and {/sup} and to get subscript you just use {sub} and {/sub}… [replacing, of course, the braces there with brackets]
Thank you. Duly performed. Of course I used too many returns to make it effectively shrink my sig, but it doesn’t shout so much. Now… double size and bold, with extra 3d effect…
I know I wasn’t the first person ever to put a sig in tiny print, but can I have credit at least for being the first person with a really huge sig to put it all in tiny print, last week?
Please. It’s very important to me… 
Sorry, Dan, if it’s too small to read. When I wanted to add the Thackeray quote, it just made the whole thing too big, like this huge ego trip, you know? “HEY LOOKIE EVERYBODY, HERE’S DUCK DUCK GOOSE’S SIG!!”
And it won’t do italics for the book title, I’m very annoyed to discover, but I am learning to live with it. Slowly. With counseling.
Well, I would never dream of picking on you, DDG! Or on your sig. I’m glad we have them, because we can personalize them to our heart’s content. But look at your sig! It’s HUGE! It’s bigger, in fact, than your last post. Now, granted, with you that’s not a commmon occurence; you usually have lengthy posts, to which the sig must seem miniscule in comparison. So now my aging eyes need to squint to find your post, which is dwarfed by your sig, and then squint some more to read to sig itself! I dunno, I have always considered the sig to complement the post, not overwhelm it. And that’s the impression I get when I see a long sig file anyway.
But to me, a long sig can be way cool if it’s regular size. To me, it’s still preferable to have a short-but-sweet sig, but as long as I don’t have to squint, no sweat. [And of course, this is all subjective. YVMV (Your Vision May Vary)]
Anyway, I certainly see the logic of a longer sig - you want to say something about yourself, and sometimes one sentence or quote isn’t enough. No problem here! But my own philosophy is that if I am going to add something to my sig that’ll make the sig lengthy, I take something out. Heck, it’s sometimes better to rotate witty sayings and references than to have a zillion of them clogging up my post.
And FWIW, I like your Thackeray quote - or is it quotes? I see two new ones at the bottom. I’ve always been a little puzzled by the Quantum Mechanic one, but that might just be me (I think I followed the link and didn’t see the relevance immediately)…
Since we’re discussing the length of “signatures” here, let me mention that a moderator may ask you to change your “signature” if it becomes too long. “Too long” is of course something difficult to quantify exactly, but if you keep it to three lines or less you are pretty muuch guaranteed to be OK. If you are unsure as to the appropriateness of the length of your signature, you can always e-mail a moderator or administrator and ask them if the signature is too long.
Another word of advice I have: if you start posting regularly, I would save in your e-mail address book the addresses of the administrators and the moderators of the fora that you frequent the most. If you are unsure about a board or forum policy, it makes it easier to send a quick question to the moderator or administrator.
Additionally, on the question of signatures: I personally think it’s a good idea to only include your signature once in a thread. The wittiest comment loses its charm after the second repetition.
And finally, in honour of this discussion, I will dust off this signature provided to me by the ever helpful Duck Duck Goose, which I use only on grand occasions.
[sub]It did depend on one indeed;
Behold him, – Arnold Winkelried!
There sounds not to the trump of fame
The echo of a nobler name.
(James Montgomery, The Patriot’s Password)[/sub]
dantheman: what OS and browser are you using? Here’s what I have noticed:
[ul]
[li]font sizes appear smaller on the Macintosh than they do on the PC.[/li][li]Some browsers allow you to increase the font size for the pages displayed on your browser.[/li][li]When I was using Netscape 4.7 on the Macintosh, I was unable to increase the font size on SDMB pages. But I could do it with iCab (another Macintosh browser) and now that I have Netscape 6 the text appeared larger with the default settings, and if I changed the default settings for font size the change appeared on SDMB pages (unlike with Netscape 4.7).[/li][/ul]
I’m not a browser expert, so probably some other poster will come along and give a better explanation. In the meantime, do whatever you can to make your reading easier. Try increasing the default font size in your browser.
I am using Internet Explorer on Windows ME.
And yes, certainly I can increase the font size. But then that would make all the other text too big. I feel like frickin’ Goldilocks over here. Fiddlesticks! The thing is, those sigs in question are in sub or super font, and I just wondered if I was the only one noticing an increase in that style, or even if that style increase was really happening.
You know what does seem odd, though - and I have not checked this myself - how come you can use {sub} and {sup} in the sigs but not {i}, {b}, etc.? Weird!
Anyway, it’s not the main text that’s small to me; it’s just the sig. Surely I’m not the only one seeing this… Right? Hello…?
Hmm… I wonder who has the world’s shortest sig?
The trouble with sigs in vB is that when you change it, all of them change, in all 3,117 of your posts. With UBB you could play games with your sig line, but no more.
Sorry, Dan, the ego won’t let me shorten it even to accommodate your fading sight. Maybe it’s time for a new Lenscrafters prescription? (Can you say “bifocals”? Hey, I had to bite the bifocal bullet a couple years ago, time to spread the misery around…)
And Arnold, you don’t normally have a sig, but those of us who do, have to get in the habit of clicking on Show Sig every time, or else we forget. So it’s All or Nothin’, per thread. We don’t have enough brain cells to devote to the task of “remembering whether to click on Show Sig this time.” Why doesn’t somebody change it back so the default is to always Show Sig?
A sig is your flags flying on the parapets of your castle. Some people just need more flags than others, to be truly happy.
You can. Was this an April Fool?