The Enid Blyton Society

How do you quote ?

The simplest way is to click on the "Quote button, to the right of the post. You can then delete any surplus or irrelevant script as you want.

Or when your posting your message, scroll down and then in the messages at the top-right corner there will be quote.

7upromana01 wrote:Or when your posting your message, scroll down and then in the messages at the top-right corner there will be quote.

Just testing it!
Thanks!

Yeah but sometimes what happens is that some thing appears like

xyz

and sometimes it appears like.....

Moonraker wrote:The simplest way is to click on the "Quote button, to the right of the post. You can then delete any surplus or irrelevant script as you want.

So how do I maintain a balance?

OK that went super wrong. Just forget it. Dont have the energy to explain what I did. And the results.... we all can see. Oh I have the came question as Poppy now.

If you quote someone who has already quoted someone else, you'll get a quote within a quote (I think that's what you were talking about, Darrell?) If any of the quoted material isn't needed, you can just delete the bit you don't need using the delete button on your keyboard as usual. But you must have [ quote="person's user name" ] at the beginning and [ /quote ] at the end (with no gaps - I've only put gaps in because otherwise my example would come out as a quotation).

In general, avoid quoting unless absolutely necessary because it can cause unnecessary repetition and waste space. For example, someone might have listed the things they like about Five Go to Smuggler's Top. Instead of quoting them when you reply, you could say something like, "I agree with most of what you said about Five Go to Smuggler's Top, Poppy [or whomever], but in my opinion Block is..."

Anita Bensoussane wrote:(with no gaps - I've only put gaps in because otherwise my example would come out as a quotation).

Yes mine did in my last to last post too.

Anita Bensoussane wrote:In general, avoid quoting unless absolutely necessary because it can cause unnecessary repetition and waste space.

     I tend to quote quite often, although I always pare it down to the minimum I think is needed to indicate what I'm talking about. But even so the quoted passage can sometimes be somewhat long - for instance, if it is a rather complex or subtle comment.
     Also, I sometimes use multiple quotes from one or more people, then put my response after each.
     Are these things I do acceptable? I guess it's subjective to a degree just how much quoted text is needed to remind people what you are talking about.
     In general, it doesn't seem to be a huge issue here, though. What is undesirable, and especially common in mailing lists, is to quote an entire post (sometimes complete with lengthy automated footers), but then reply only to one small point in it - or, even worse, keep the quote but make a new comment that doesn't refer to any part of it. But worst of all is quoting nested posts with several generations (often confusingly in reverse order) of previous messages. I think I have on occasion counted 7 generations of such quoted text in mailing lists, all out of order because some people top-post, and some bottom-post.
     In my opinion, people who massively over-quote (and I mean *massively*), or who top post, so that you have to read the answer before you know what the question will be, or else require you to scroll down, then up again, are effectively saying to everyone else: "My time is more valuable than yours, so I'm not going to bother to edit my message to make it easier for people to read, but rather require you to take more time to figure out what I'm saying that I'm too lazy to organize properly".
     You occasionally see this little item, which summarizes the point aptly:

  A.: Because it upsets the flow of the discussion.
  Q.: Why is it so bad?
  A.: Top posting.
  Q.: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet?

Regards, Michael.

MJE wrote:      I tend to quote quite often, although I always pare it down to the minimum I think is needed to indicate what I'm talking about. But even so the quoted passage can sometimes be somewhat long - for instance, if it is a rather complex or subtle comment.
     Also, I sometimes use multiple quotes from one or more people, then put my response after each.
     Are these things I do acceptable?

Yes, because you've carefully considered which parts to quote and you're quoting them for a reason.