Quoting etiquette

During an ordinary face-to-face conversation, even among several people, after Jack stops speaking, Jill, before replying, has no need to say, "Jack just said, 'Blah Blah Blah." Everyone listening heard what Jack just said, and barring some form of short term memory loss, everyone can be expected to remember the last thing Jack said, no matter how complicated the speech. But when having the same kind of conversation in a forum, memory loss in the participants is assumed for some inexplicable reason. And so the quoting begins.

After the reader plows through some great field of text, it is annoying to have plow through it again in another post in the form of a quote. And if it is necessary to quote to provide a clear reference to that which is being replied, the reference should be as concise as possible. Don't make the reader pull his hair and scream, "Hey! I just plowed that field!" To that end, here are some guidelines:

1. A reply to the immediately preceding post is always assumed unless otherwise noted. No quoting is necessary, except see below.
2. A reply to an earlier post may need a quote to establish to which post the reply applies. Or, a few words may suffice to establish reference without resorting to a quote. For example, if in a long thread there is only one post that mentions a cat, the reply could say something like, "But the cat has nine lives," and the reference is established in the reader's mind without resulting to quoting.
3. If a quote is determined to be the way to establish a reference, make the quote as short as possible. Quote only the pertinent words. For example, from a post of several paragraphs, you might quote just quote, "The cat is probably dead." Or the entire post could be quoted using an ellipsis: "Once upon a time...happily ever after" without repeating it.

Now how do you obtain the ideal minimum quote?

• If you click the Quote icon in your post, you get [quote]insert quote here[/quote]. Any text between the quote tags can be edited just like any other.
• If you click the Quote button in another's post, the entire text will appear between quote tags in a new post's dialog box (along with additional info) e.g.: [quote author="@[somemembername] source="/post/[somepostnumber]/thread" timestamp="[sometimestamp]"]The text of the entire post[/quote] Again, the text of the post may be edited for brevity.

[/b] button and create a text blivet.


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