Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

Since this forum doesn't have sticky posts or help files, I present here three useful procedures for doing things in posts that may be obvious to some, but not so obvious to others. Hopefully, the key words included in the subtitle brought you here.

1. To avoid a full paragraph break, and insert only a line break, use the key sequence shift-return to skip only one line. Very useful when citing poetry.

2. To insert an image (not from your own computer, but from elsewhere on the web), while in the editor use the button near top-right labeled "< >" which will open an HTML source code version of your post. At the location where you want to insert the image, enter this line:

<img src="http://specific-image-URL" />  [note the space before the final "/>"]

You'll need to experiment with the placement of this line relative to existing paragraph breaks (<p> and </p>), depending on how the rest of your post is formatted. Note: There is NO way to "upload" an image directly from your computer, short of first posting it somewhere on the web.

3. When you respond to a post by clicking the "Quote" button, that entire post will be formatted as a "block quote." But if you only want a small part of that quote cited, it's perfectly acceptable to edit what's in the block quote. Of course, one should always leave intact the name of the person quoted.

Any forum members who want to add more tips, please feel free to continue this list.