Here's a few helpful tips to elegantly format your posts even if you are not a pro with HTML. Set your "Post Mode" in Comment Preferences to "Auto Format" to activate these simple tricks:

Bold and Italics
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
Making Links
Making Lists
Putting up Images
Quoting
Signatures

 

Bold and Italics
If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, you can type it into the text box surrounded in asterisks (*), *like this*. This will cause the text between the asterisks to be rendered in bold type. Similarly, you can also enter text between underscores (_) or slashes (/), _like this_ /or this/, in order to render the given text in italics.

You can also use the traditional HTML code for Bold and Italic:

<b>INSERT BOLD Text</b>

<i>INSERT ITALIC Text</i>

 

Paragraphs and Line Breaks
In order to start a new paragraph, simply press Enter twice. To insert a line break, press Enter once. Note that text will automatically wrap to fit the size of the screen, so line breaks like that are generally unnecessary. In most cases, you shouldn't need to hit Enter at all except for paragraph breaks.

 

Making Links
Of course, you can't post on the Web without needing to insert a link every now and then. Creating a link is as simple as typing in the URL (the address shown in your browser's toolbar at the top of the window). Auto Format mode will automatically turn all URLs into links. For example, if you were to type the following text:

This website runs weblog software from http://scoop.kuro5hin.org.

the resulting comment will look like this:

This website runs weblog software from http://scoop.kuro5hin.org.

Of course, it's not always desirable to have the text of the link be the same as the target of the link. You can use brackets ('[' and ']') in order to specify both the link text and link target. For example, if you wanted the text "This search engine" to point to http://www.google.com/, you would type the following:

[This search engine http://www.google.com/]

Which will render like so:

This search engine

Making Lists
You can create bulleted lists by entering a series of lines starting with an asterisk followed by a space ('* '). Numbered lists can be created similarly, by typing a series of lines beginning with a number follwed by a period ('1. '). For example, typing in the following text:

I had these items for breakfast this morning:
* Eggs
* Bacon
* Toast
* Hot grits

will give the following result:

I had these items for breakfast this morning:

• Eggs
• Bacon
• Toast
• Hot grits

 

Putting Up Images
The easiest way to put an image in your comment or diary is to link to it. You can either host the image off a service like Flikr and link to it off there or simply link to the site that is currently hosting it. The code to link to an image is:

<img src="INSERT Link to Image">

 

Quoting
Try to use these block quotes when you quote another source like an article, some other website, or something someone else said. Write it like this:

<div class="blockquote">INSERT Text of the Quote</div>

And it will look like this:

Remember, if you quote from an article, please link back to the article, copyrights can be a tricky thing.

Signatures
If you want an image or personal quote to appear at the bottom of every comment you make, click "YOUR Page" in the top right menu. Then click "My Profile". In the signature box you can type a personal quote or link to an image. Make sure to click "Save All Changes" once you are done.

Note: You must have an account to display a signature.

 

* This page was adapted from Daily Kos and Blogging the Boys