This is the very first message board I have joined, and I always thought it was a tradition here. Isn’t it?
Personally, when someone answers me and takes the trouble to bold my nick, it just tickles me that they would go through that extra trouble.
It’s like a show of respect, even if someone disagrees with you.
Kinda like, " I may not agree with your point of view, but I will defend to my death your right to say it, Asshole."
Anyway, I think it’s a cool thing to do, and I will always remember to associate it with The Dope (although it may have begun somewhere else, for all i know)
I find it useful in long threads. If I don’t want to read every single post, I can quickly scan the page and find any that say friedo in them, and read those.
ETA: Of course, I could do that with my browser’s find function as well, but I’m lazy. And sometimes people misspell my name. Fredo is the guy who gets whacked, and Frodo is the guy who’s gay for Sam.
I consider it respectful, and always bold usernames. Occasionally I may forget, or screw up the coding, but that’s rare. I prefer people to bold mine, as well.
I do it (when I remember) because a few usernames look like regular words (though oddly placed/used in a sentence) or perhaps the name of someone IRL without something to indicate that I am referring to a board user. To maintain consistency, I then extend bolding to all board user names.
Hey–I’m gonna try that contrl-b idea… …and it worked. !!
now, I’m gonna try , say, control I for italics, and gee whiz, that worked too!
Why is this not printed in HUGE BOLD LETTERS someplace where even the stoopid Dopers like me can find it?
Wow–this is amazing…my quality of life will be improved forever!
For years now, I’ve always used the square brakets…
type braket, b bracket, then a few words later, bracket, slash b bracket…what a pain in the rump.
But now I’m can say “free at last, free at last, thank god Almighty, I’m free at last”
(oh, yeah…apologies to Martin Luther King. So folks…don’t pit me, okay?)
What’s nice is that it works both ways. You can begin with ctrl-i/b/u and begin typing, or you can select text already typed and use ctrl-i/b/u on it too and it’ll wrap the words in brackets.
Before this thread takes a “bad turn”, I would like to add that whether one chooses to bold or not should not be seen as being in any way lacking in manners and/or decorum, okay?
I would like to take the responsibility for having given the wrong impression, and indicating that bolding is a sign of respect.
It is not, and I regret writing this. It is a personal choice and that is all.
I was educated using The Elements of Style, and I know better than this.
Sometimes I get too full of myself and “need taking down” a notch or two.
Actually, it’s something I’ve taken to doing with communications at work, especially if I’m giving instructions to multiple people in the same document/email…
"Melissa, I need you to do A, B, and C.
John H, when Melissa is done with C, you need to take it over and do D, then give the results to Jim.
Jim, when John H hands it to you, it should be correct. Call me at that point."
I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a jerk, but when I bold somebody’s name, I don’t mean it as a sign of respect. I do it even for people I think are twits!
(Actually that isn’t quite true, because the only people that I think are twits are on my ignore list, so I almost never reply to or quote them. But if I were to reference such a person, I would bold their name. A lot of us have names that don’t look like names, so bolding them enhances readability.)
