Almost every reference to other members sees the name bolded.
Are their automatic ways to make this happen, or is everyone being very polite and taking the time to do it themselves? :dubious:
Just form, Philster.
What hawthorne said, Philster.
As per hawthorne and roadrunner70, they give good instructions Philster
Has this gone far enough yet?
While roadrunner70 and hawthorne are correct, Philster, they neglected to mention that (sadly) you have to do it by hand.
Oops, simulpost there.
I don’t think it has gone far enough yet, with only roadrunner70, hawthorne, UnwrittenNocturne and lil’ ol’ **Tusculan ** responding to Philster.
Ok, I’ve been following proper form then, but ‘why?’ …why is it proper form? - so people can surf for references to themselves???
They can do that more easily by doing a “vanity search” on their names. But bolding a name calls attention to the fact that someone is speaking to you when you are reading a thread.
It also makes it easier to follow the “conversation” by highlighting who is responding to whom.
Most importantly, I think, not all usernames are obviously names. Some of them are uncapitalized words that don’t stand out as names, so bolding makes them clearer that you’re talking about the user astro or manhattan or tracer or flood and not what these words more often mean. Bolding consistently makes it clear that you’re not just shouting at specific users.
You’d think that after nearly 3,000 posts I would have gotten around to asking sooner. 
Thanks!
I’ve noticed that some newspapers, in particular the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, does this with the first mention of a proper name in each article. Isn’t that right Jonathan Chance?
Does sooner post here? No, you were right to post in ATMB. You shouldn’t direct questions to individual posters.
Regarding USCDiver’s post, I recently started not bolding the second time or subsequent uses of a particular member’s name in a post. Not in a thread, but in a single post. How does that strike the SDMB stylebook mavens?
And of course another thought occurred while submitting; I’m inconsistent about bolding when I have cause to use my own user name in a post. What does the collective consciousness think about that?
It’s one of those herding things. We all do it, so we all do it (if you know what I mean.
Every person’s policy is - ‘everyone does it, I have no idea why, but I will do it too so as not to be different’
Sheep!! You are all sheep. Ha!
For the record I did not find this by vanity search!
Many many publications do this (bolding the first mention of a name in an article and not subsequent mentions). It happens a lot in sports and celebrity pieces. But I’m not aware of it being in any stylebook.
Well, I have to agree with Lobsang when he refers–
Ow! OW! QUIT IT!
runs