# vbulletin bug?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [August 6, 2001, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058 "2001-08-06T02:26:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![galt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@galt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galt)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/1 "2001-08-06T02:26:17Z")

</div>

In responding to another post, I ended up being guilty of not previewing my response (since it was so simple I couldn’t possibly have screwed it up), and lo and behold, the formatting got screwed up (the font for my own text ended up huge). On a whim, I decided to go back and look at exactly what I had submitted, to see where I went wrong, and two things about it bother me:

1. When I hit “quote” to the particular post I was responding to, the **default** response looks pre-screwed-up to me.

2. There is nothing in the response I submitted that would account for the font getting large.

Try it yourself. Go read [this post by capacitor](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=80448#post1487621), then hit the “quote” button underneath it. The resulting code in the reply window looks like this (I’ve changed the square brackets to angle brackets and paraphrased for clarity)

```auto

<quote>
        <b>
        <quote>
                some text
                </b>
        </quote>
        </b>
</quote>

```

…note the unbalanced bold tags. Now, if you add some text underneath all that and hit preview, everything you type ends up as **large text**. WTF? I’ve always wondered how people manage to screw up the formatting such that their whole post ends up in huge text, and I’m guessing that this is how.

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**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/2 "2001-08-06T03:20:44Z")

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Doesn’t seem to work for me. I tried it here and there.

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**Author:** ![Louie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@Louie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Louie)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/3 "2001-08-06T05:05:32Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by galt \*  
> \*\*Now, if you add some text underneath all that and hit preview, everything you type ends up as **large text**. WTF? I’ve always wondered how people manage to screw up the formatting such that their whole post ends up in huge text, and I’m guessing that this is how. \*\*

IIRC, the large text will only show up on Netscape browsers. The text will apprear normal in IE.

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**Author:** ![Louie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@Louie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Louie)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/4 "2001-08-06T05:07:02Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> ```
> **
> 
> ```
> 
> > [@](#):
> >
> > ```
> > some normal text
> > **
> > 
> > ```
> 
> ```
> **
> 
> ```

Text that might be bigger.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Louie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@Louie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Louie)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/5 "2001-08-06T05:10:01Z")

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BINGO! I was right. And in addition, the text is in the default font (usually Times New Roman), not the board’s font.

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**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2001, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vbulletin-bug/75058/6 "2001-08-06T05:26:42Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by galt \*
> 
> 1. When I hit “quote” to the particular post I was responding to, the **default** response looks pre-screwed-up to me.

That’s because the post by capacitor has a mis-matched bold ending tag (i.e. an ending tag but no beginning tag.)  
As Louie said, an ending bold tag without a beginning bold tag may include font sizes to change in some browsers.