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I can see why people like to use them, but I like posts that read like letters.....old fashioned , I know, but good prose is always easier to read and stimulates you to respond in kind.Postings without quotes seem to me to be well crafted rather than just fired off out.Thought has gone into HOW to reply as well as WHAT to reply.

There is no question that the quote-duels we sometimes see can appear to be intimidating....time was when I would not dare to ask /answer a particular person for fear of being "quoted " into submission!!!

What does the Concertina diaspora think ?

Regards

Robin

Also I can't use the damn'd quote button anyway.!!

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Robin

When I am sure that my post will follow directly on from yours, then there is no need to quote but how can I be sure of that? Maybe as I type three other people are forming their replies, too? And the more craftfully I prepare my response the longer it takes, giving even more people time to pip me to the post ... (pun intended)!

 

Generally speaking I use the quote button when replying to a post that is not the end of the thread and while I do confess I use it to speed things up, I hope that I also write a reasonable well crafted response, too.

 

Samantha

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Robin didn't really say any of this. I'm just making a silly point and having a little fun. :P

As you can see, the "Quote" feature can be abused, but I, for one, like having posts arranged by

- [response]. This was never possible with handwritten letters, but I'll bet if it had been, it would have been well used. Think of it not as reading prose but dialogue.
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Since someone else brought the issue up, maybe I can reveal my abysmal ignorance and plead for instructions on how to make the quote feature work.

My pleasure.

 

Simple quoting: Press the Quote button that appears at the top right of every post. This will bring up a form with two windows. In the upper window, type your reply. The lower window, labeled "Original Post to Quote," will contain the full text of the message to which you're replying.

 

If you wanted to quote the entire message, you can proceed to click "Add Reply" or "Preview Post." If you want to trim the quote to the relevant part, simply edit it in the lower window.

 

Advanced quoting: You don't need to use the Quote button. In any message you're composing, insert QUOTE in square brackets. Follow that with the text you want to quote. Then close the quote section by inserting the code /QUOTE in square brackets. The advantage of this procedure is that it allows you to intersperse multiple quotes and your responses in a single reply.

 

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the quote feature is to try it. Click the Quote button to reply to a post. Enter your reply (following the "Simple quoting" procedure above), then click "Preview Post." You'll see a representation of how your message will appear on the board. Below that will be an editable window. Study the quote syntax in that window.

Edited by Michael Reid
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Since someone else brought the issue up, maybe I can reveal my abysmal ignorance and plead for instructions on how to make the quote feature work.

Two ways, actually:

 

1) First, you click on the "Quote" button at the upper right of the message (at least in my browser). This opens up a box where you can compose separate quote box just below the reply box. (You may have to scroll your browser screeen to see it.)

 

In addition to composing your reply, you can edit what's in the quote box. I delete all the text I'm not specifically replying to, so that there's no confusion. However, as David Barnert demonstrated, one can also falsify the "quote" by altering or even completely replacing it.

 

2) The second way is to use the little button marked "QUOTE", above the reply-composition box. Click it once and it inserts into your text the string "[ QUOTE ]" (but without the spaces, which I had to put it so that it wouldn't actually create a text box, i.e., so you could see it). Click it again, and it inserts "[ /QUOTE ]" (again without spaces), which indicates the end of the quoted text and closes the quote box. Any text you put between those opening and closing tags (as they're called) will be displayed in the text box. Here's an example:

Two differences between the two methods are (1) that the first method identifies the message being quoted, while the second one doesn't, and (2) the second method can be used more than once, while the first can't.

Note that if you use the first method on something that already contains a quote, the quote-box tags will be displayed within the quoted text in the edit box, not in nested boxes. But when you post your response (or if you preview it), you'll see nested boxes instead of the tags.

 

If I'm responding to several individual points within a post, I'll generally use the first method in order to identify the message I'm responding to, but I'll delete from the text all text except the first bit I'm responding to. Then for each subsequent point I'll use the second method, copying the text I'm responding to from the original message and putting it between paired quote-box tags, followed by my response.

 

I have sometimes had problems with the editor's quoting mechanism getting confused when I use the second method more than once in a single post. I.e., it starts reversing the order of the opening and closing tags, with the result that most of what's shown inside and outside of the quote boxes is the reverse of what it should be. To prevent this, I start by clicking the button for the quote tag several pairs of times, and this gives me several pairs of correctly ordered tags. I then place the material I'm quoting between the pairs of tags where the tag with the slash *ends* the quote, and my own text between the quoted sections (I.e., starting *after* a tag that has a slash).

 

By the way, I think this discussion belongs in another Forum, but I'm too lazy to try to redirect it.

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...I, for one, like having posts arranged by
- [response]. This was never possible with handwritten letters, but I'll bet if it had been, it would have been well used.

It *is* possible with "handwritten" letters. In the old Forum I was in the habit of copying the portions of text I was responding to, and identifying each section -- quoted parts and my own parts -- by preceding it with the name of the person "speaking".

 

Various other people also used this technique, which I think was quite helpful. However, many did not.

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Robin said:

What does the Concertina diaspora think ?

David said:

I, for one, like having posts arranged by
- [response].

I agree with David on this one. I have mixed feelings about the "pretty" boxes, but I definitely feel that quoted original text interspersed with responses helps avoid misundertstanding, whether or not it's displayed in some fancy graphic format.

 

(Note that I've used the second method I described to include here quotes from two separate prior posts.)

 

And Michael Reid's response was apparently posted while I was composing mine, a wonderful example of the problem Samantha described. :)

Edited by JimLucas
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One of the problems with using the quote "code button" is that it doesn't tell you who or when. BUT -- there is a neat way around this. After you've made your "quote" go select the person and time from the banner head who said that and add that information inside the first quote brackets with an "equal" mark such that it will read (in your post entry window):

 

(Start bracket) QUOTE= (whatever you paste in there, like the name and date)(End bracket)

What does the Concertina diaspora think?

You can then quote responsively from many posts:

 

:) - posted on Oct 8 2003+ 03:06 PM-->

QUOTE(Jim Lucas -with his horde of many and various squeezebles :) - posted on Oct 8 2003 @ 03:06 PM)
I definitely feel that quoted original text interspersed with responses helps avoid misundertstanding

And so on....

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...I, for one, like having posts arranged by
- [response]. This was never possible with handwritten letters, but I'll bet if it had been, it would have been well used.

It *is* possible with "handwritten" letters. In the old Forum I was in the habit of copying the portions of text I was responding to, and identifying each section -- quoted parts and my own parts -- by preceding it with the name of the person "speaking".

But I didn't mean " 'handwritten' " I meant "handwritten" (this *is* the "quotes" thread, is it not?). Pen and ink. And paper.

Two differences between the two methods are (1) that the first method identifies the message being quoted' date=' while the second one doesn't, and (2) the second method can be used more than once, while the first can't.[/quote'] Note that you can also put information ("Also from Jim") in the headers to these 2ary quotes by putting "=" and then the text after the word "QUOTE" and before the end of the tag. The text will appear in parentheses. It's a good idea, then, to preview your post to make sure you've got it right.

 

Added later: I just saw Rich's post, which appeared while I was previewing this one (and adding a space between the " and the ' for clarity).

Edited by David Barnert
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:) Apparently so.-->

QUOTE(Apparently posted by Rich Morse on Oct 8 2003 @ 04:09 PM; do smilies work in here, too? :) Apparently so.)
You can then quote responsively from many posts:
Now if we could only learn to quote responsibly, as well. ;)

 

Now how did that extra ":) Apparently so.-->" wind up at the top? It's not in my original text, but is apparently due to some quirk of the browser. Hmm, if that's the case, maybe not everybody sees it, and it "sounds" like I'm hallucinating.

Edited by JimLucas
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Perhaps the easiest way to understand the quote feature is to try it.

I get it. Thanks. Not exactly intuitive, but maybe that 's because I'm a bad intuiter.

 

A personal digression: michael, we played the waltz/hambo/etc break at Glen Echo Friday night. Great success. THe concertina was amplified enough to hear it in Baltimore. We had to play a Zweifacher, and lived in dread K2 would pronounce it wrong. All was well.

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As I always use cut & paste, I have never felt the need to use the quote boxes, prefering to use speech quotes which also helps to keep posts shorter. I find I skip over the quote boxes and ignore them.

Looking at emails from around the world, I must be old fashioned as I seem to be one of the few who takes the use of punctuation, "speech quotes" (and brackets) to the extreme. Probably because, as a computer sort, I parse everything to check for ambiguity in statement construction.

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As I always use cut & paste, I have never felt the need to use the quote boxes,...

I cut and paste the text I use in the quote boxes. The two techniques are independent, i.e., each can be used without the other, but they can also be used together.

...prefering to use speech quotes which also helps to keep posts shorter.

Except with very short quotes, I don't see that avoiding the boxes makes posts significantly shorter. On the other hand, the graphic separation of the quote boxes makes it much easier to keep track of the distinction between quoted text and fresh commentary.

 

I personally tend to "speech quotes" for very short quotations, which I want to appear "in line", and quote boxes (since they're available) for longer quotes, which in ordinary emails I would show as separate paragraphs and mark in some other way (e.g., a leading '>' on each line), or in "pretty" documents with indentation and maybe a smaller font.

 

Note that "speech quotes" also have other uses, e.g., to indicate restricted or even dubious use of a term, just as you (and I) have done with the term "speech quotes". :) On the other hand, quoted text can be partial, or even edited, as I've done above. (I inserted the "..." where I split your text.)

I find I skip over the quote boxes and ignore them.

To me that sounds more prejudicial than functional.

Probably because, as a computer sort, I parse everything to check for ambiguity in statement construction.

I've been doing that since before I was aware of computers. I would suspect that you do it in both environments because that's the way you are -- because it's something you consider personally important, -- and not necessarily because of your computer training. But that's a serious digression and IMO not worth the energy of a real debate. :)

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I can see why people like to use them, but I like posts that read like letters.....

To return to the subject. I have had an Internet email account for some 10 years now, and have been using email on non-connected systems for a lot longer than that. Over that time it has *become* my vernacular. To force me not to use quotes would be as uncomfortable for me as clearly forcing you to use quotes would be for you.

 

I will agree that quoting on the board is not anywhere as straightforward as it could be, and multiple and split quotes are awkward to say the least.

 

Chris

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