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Formatting posts

The most basic formatting is leaving a blank line to start a new paragraph. For short posts containing only words, this is usually all you need. However, more advanced formatting is available. Formatting can be done directly by adding HTML elements, and/or with Markdown.

HTML

The pages you see are ultimately in HTML. Arbitrary HTML can't be allowed because that could break lots of things. However, a certain subset is specifically allowed to provide some control over formatting without giving you the capability to break the larger page.

tags

HTML tags start with <name> and usually end with </name>. Whatever you put between the starting and ending part gets effected by that tag.

The allowed tags are:

• <a href="URL">text</a>

  Makes text a clickable link. Clicking goes to URL.

• <img src="URL">

  Inserts the image at URL in-line.

• <p>

  Starts a new paragraph. The ending </p> is allowed but usually not required.

• <b>text</b>, <strong>text</strong>

  Writes the text in bold --> b-text, strong-text

• <i>text</i>, <em>text</em>

  Writes the text in italics --> i-text, em-text

• <hr>

  Draws a horizontal line.

• <h1>text</h1> ... <h6>text</h6>

  Headings, with weight 1 to 6. Weight 1 is a top level heading, with the remaining numbers successively more subordinate:

  Heading 1

  
  

  Heading 2
  

  Heading 3
  

  Heading 4
  

  Heading 5
  

  Heading 6
  

• <blockquote>text</blockquote>

  Shows the text in a separate block, visually set off from the surrounding text. Use this to show text that you are quoting from elsewhere:

  Four score and seven years ago, not much of any significance happened. This is more rambling to show how long text is wrapped. Blah, blah, blah.

• <strike>text</strike>, <del>text</del>

  Writes text with a line thru it to show that it is crossed out or deleted:

  strike text
  del text

• <code>text</code>

  Writes the text in-line in fixed space font:

  In-line code text --> In-line code text <-- In-line code text.

• <pre>text</pre>

  Writes a block of text in fixed space font. Use this for source code to keep it from getting wrapped and formatted to oblivion:

  begin
    level := TankLevel(sludge.tank);
    thresh := sludge.thresh_high;
    if EpaInspector then begin
      thresh := sludge.thresh_legal;
      end;
    if level > thresh then begin
      PumpOn (sludge);
      end;
  

• <br>

  Inserts a "break" in flowed text. The following text starts on a new line.

• <ol> ... </ol>, <ul> ... </ul>

  Lists. OL (ordered list) creates a numbered list. Each entry will have a successive number. UL (unordered list) just puts a bullet in front of each list entry.

  Add list entries with the LI (list item) tag, below.

• <li>text

  Starts a new entry in the current list. This works for both numbered (OL) and unnumbered (UL) lists.

• ^text

  Writes text as a superscript --> P = I²R

• _text

  Writes text as a subscript --> h_FE = 50

• <section>text</section>

  Defines a separate section of the document.

Special characters

The HTML &xxx; special characters are available. Click on the heading for more information.

Markdown

This site also supports the markdown language CommonMark. This is intended to be a little easier to type than HTML, but be aware that some simple text sequences can have effects on formatting.

Briefly, the markdown language elements are:

• Bold: **text** is text
• Italic: *text* or _text_ is text
• Code/monospace: `text` is text
• Links: [name](url) cause name to be a link to url
• Strikethrough: ~~text~~ is text
• Blockquotes: > text is

  text

• Bullets: start your lines with * or -
• Numbered lists: start your lines with 1., 2., etc.
• Headers: start your line with # for H1, ## for H2, etc. Must have a space between # and the start of your text.
• Horizontal line: --- on a line on its own.
• footnotes: use [^1], [^2], etc., inline, and add [^1]: words to the bottom of your post for automatic formatting and linking.