# WTF happened around here? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 8, 2020, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781 "2020-07-08T21:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/21 "2020-07-09T17:28:41Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > And if you want to quote the post immediately prior to yours (like I just did), highlight the text and click on gray “quote” box that appears, **BUT** you have to break one of the cardinal rules of The Old Dope, which is to change something in the quoted paragraph. What I do (and did) was put a dash at the very end after the period. Otherwise the software will not let you quote the post immediately prior-- it will delete it and you will wonder WTF happened. One tiny alteration in the quote, and it will stay. If you check, you’ll see that when the board ‘helpfully’ eats your quoted text, what has actually happened is that it went in and edited your post to remove it. After which you can go right back in and edit the post to put it back - if you do it’ll stay and not be taken out again. You have to be pretty quick on this due to the editing time limits, of course, but I’ve done it once or twice when the quoted text was necessary for my post to make sense. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/22 "2020-07-09T17:58:03Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > If you check, you’ll see that when the board ‘helpfully’ eats your quoted text, what has actually happened is that it went in and edited your post to remove it. After which you can go right back in and edit the post to put it back - if you do it’ll stay and not be taken out again. > > You have to be pretty quick on this due to the editing time limits, of course, but I’ve done it once or twice when the quoted text was necessary for my post to make sense.- That is exactly what I do. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/23 "2020-07-09T18:02:37Z")
I just leave out the last period, or the first letter when it’s obvious what it must be, or something of that sort. It’s always been legitimate to leave out portions of posts when doing so doesn’t change the meaning, and/or when it’s clear (such as by inserting [. . .] or something of the sort) that some has been left out. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/24 "2020-07-09T18:04:24Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > I just leave out the last period, or the first letter when it’s obvious what it must be, or something of that sort. > > It’s always been legitimate to leave out portions of posts when doing so doesn’t change the meaning, and/or when it’s clear (such as by inserting [. . .] or something of the sort) that some has been left out. Testing - I just doubled a space to your quote. Odds are the screen won’t show it, but will it still respect it as a difference? ETA - crap - I screwed up the coding, invalidating the test. I am NOT fond of [/quote] having to be on its own line! ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/25 "2020-07-09T20:02:27Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > OK, I actually like the quoting better now. All you do is highlight what you want to quote, and a little gray quote button shows up. Press that, and it will show up in your reply box. If you want to multi-quote, just do it again and again. It makes it super-easy to multi-quote sections of each post, or even sections of the same post for multiple answers. In the old system, I had to be really careful about putting in the QUOTE and /QUOTE tags if I wanted to break up a post to answer it in sections The issue I’ve run into is when I want to quote the entire post and break it up into sections. I know you can highlight a section, hit quote, highlight another section, hit quote again etc. But a lot of times it’s hard to know how you want to break something up until you start responding to the different sections. In the new board, you can’t just go make quote tags willy nilly. It won’t work. One nice feature, however, is that I can quote a quote. For example, you (RitterSport) were quoted by ThelmaLou. Instead of looking for where that post was, I just highlight your quote, in her post. It’ll still be attributed to you, as you can see, but it’s going to show as a reply to her. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/26 "2020-07-09T20:19:40Z")
Breaking up a quoted post into subquotes works just like it used to - you have to remember to add a closing quote tag and copy-paste the opening quote tag, putting your response in between. The difference, of course, being that you have to remember to put each tag on its own line. Which I forget about a third of the time, though the always-present preview helps some. Fortunately it’s a quick edit to fix. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/27 "2020-07-09T20:20:00Z")
> [@Hermitian](#): > > They say you can never go home again. > > Welcome home! Thanks…it’s amazing to see how familiar “faces” there are! ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/28 "2020-07-09T22:06:17Z")
Hi @sarahfeena. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2020, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/29 "2020-07-09T23:40:45Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > But a lot of times it’s hard to know how you want to break something up until you start responding to the different sections. In the new board, you can’t just go make quote tags willy nilly. It won’t work. Yes you can. Same quote tags work, they just have to be on separate lines. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2020, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/30 "2020-07-11T01:03:30Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > I’ve been warming to it slowly. I still can’t quote worth a damn. But I figured out how to be a traffic cone, which isn’t bad. Damn, I wanted to be the traffic cone, then Becky took the race car and I had to be the iron or the scottie dog. … So, same ol’ game, but different pieces. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2020, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/31 "2020-07-12T17:58:52Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Damn, I wanted to be the traffic cone, then Becky took the race car and I had to be the iron or the scottie dog. Aw. The perfect place for me to post–if I still had my [old avatar](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/b4/d7/76b4d7a4fd5e13ed9e02db4760151d45.png). ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2020, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/32 "2020-07-24T02:33:03Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > But I figured out how to be a traffic cone, which isn’t bad. So are you saying you’d like us to steer clear of you? –G? ---
**Author:** ![Mike\_Mabes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mike_mabes/32/1782_2.png) [@Mike\_Mabes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mike_Mabes)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2020, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/33 "2020-07-24T02:39:41Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > OK, I actually like the quoting better now > [@RitterSport](#): > > It makes it super-easy to multi-quote sections of each post Just tried this. Mikey likes it! ---
**Author:** ![Hilary\_Algar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilary_algar/32/4282_2.png) [@Hilary\_Algar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilary_Algar)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/34 "2020-08-22T10:59:49Z")
That lamp was already broken before I was born. Hang in there, man. It gets better! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/35 "2020-08-22T20:45:45Z")
One caution when you try multi-quoting (which I think is the cause of a lot of mangled quotes around here): When you do the second (and subsequent) quotes, the quote will be inserted into the edit window exactly where the cursor is even if that’s a bad place for it to be. There is no automatic attempt to get the placement right, not even putting the quote tags on their own line. So before you insert additional quotes, be sure to put the cursor exactly where you want it, which must also be on an empty line by itself. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781/36 "2020-08-23T12:25:57Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Breaking up a quoted post into subquotes works just like it used to - you have to remember to add a closing quote tag and copy-paste the opening quote tag, putting your response in between. > > The difference, of course, being that _you have to remember to put each tag on its own line_. Ah, is _that_ the trick! I’d tried to break up quotes before, and since I’d never put quote tags on their own lines back in the Before Times, I’m sure that’s what I was screwing up. Thanks muchly for that bit of info. And welcome back, **Sarahfeena**! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wtf-happened-around-here/914781.md?page=1)