First, always observe the guidelines.

Thephilosophyforum.com is based on easy-to-use software with a simple interface. To get the best out of interacting with others on the Forum, here are some formatting tips and tricks.

Quoting: As the primary activity on the forum is discussion and debate, it's important to understand how to quote specific passages from those to whom you are speaking, so as to be able to reply to them with your own comments. If follow these guidelines the passage you're commenting on will appear on top with your comments following. Forum etiquette requires that if you quote another contributor's post, you include the attribution so it is clear who you are quoting.

How To Quote using Quote Button: If you select any text in a post, you will notice the QUOTE button will appear as a floating element near the text (sometimes on mobile devices it might be at top right of the text). Click or tap on the Quote button to copy the passage you wish to quote into a New Post window with its proper attribution:



And then comment on it and click Save. It will appear as follows:



Mentions: you can tag or mention another member by clicking on the @ symbol in the control bar above the edit window, then starting to type their forum name, click or tap on the required name.

Manual Quotes: If you want to quote something manually without attribution and without using the quote button simply paste in the required text and then enclose it in quote tags:


You can also select text that you want to place in quotes and click or tap the speech bubble control - you will be prompted for the attribution.

Quote with Manual Attribution: Add a source to a quote by inserting "quote=source" like so:


The source will appear under the quoted passage:



Quote with Link: Add a hyperlink to a source by entering a semi-colon directly after the source name and then pasting the URL in after it. This link will appear as the signature for the post and can link to another Forum post or any other source


Quote with Link to Source Text - Fanciest of all, link to a passage of text in a source text by using a Google Chrome feature 'copy link to highlight' (only works with Google Chrome to author's knowledge). Select the desired text in the source, right-click and choose Copy Link to Highlight from the pop-up menu. Then past the entire URL after the =.



This hyperlink will open the source text with the specified text highlighted - especially useful if you're wanting to draw attention to a particular passage in a long webpage.

HINT: If this method produces a very long text string, "enclose the entire string (after the = sign) in double quotes". Try to restrict the excerpted text to 3-4 words. Also note it sometimes doesn't work for pages in frames and some complex web pages.

Superscript: of you want a number or text to appear in superscript use the tag. This is useful if you want to conform to niceties such as using superscript for references ¹. Note - to include a URL in a superscript reference, put the superscript tag before the URL tag.