FAQ and Tutorial - Quoting and Multi-Quoting

Quoting and Multi-Quoting – FAQ
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Q- What is quoting, and why should I use it?

A- Quoting, on a forum, is used to reference what another poster has said in your reply, so that people know exactly which post you are replying to. It can also be used to highlight something specific you wish to say, or t quote the work of someone else.This can be useful when you wish to respond to one specific post in a thread, or when you want to quote SOME but not all of the users posting to the thread. It is not required to do this, but it does often help the conversation to stay on track, and also means that others do not have to go back and reread the previous posts. “Quoting” is when you quote ONE post, Multi-Quote is when you are replying to more than one poster and need to have multiple quoted posts.

Q- How do I quote from the reply textbox manually?

A- Here is an overview with pictures on how to quote manually, from the text reply box.
First, we need to start to respond to a thread. On the forums, choose which thread you want to reply to. Scroll to the very bottom of the page, and click the “add reply” button:



Once you click that, you will see the reply text box. If you are starting a new thread, go to the forum of your choice and click the "New Thread" button. You will see the same text box come up.

Now that you have your text box up, look for the "quote" button:



click the quote button. You should see the following in your text box:



If you look closely, you will see that it is actually TWO "quote words, rather than one long word. What you need to do is put the text you want to quote BETWEEN those two words. Click your mouse directly AFTER [*QUOTE], and directly BEFORE the next bracket and word, [*/QUOTE]. Note that the red star is NOT normally part of what you type. Because the forum automatically formats the text when you type the code, this is added in so you can actually see the tags without it formatting.

Next, simply type in what you wish to have quoted. Alternatively, if you know how, you can go to the words you wish to have quoted on another webpage,site,or file, and copy it. Then return to the textbox and click inbetween the tags so your cursor is between them, right click, and choose paste.

So, if you did it correctly, you should see something like the following in your textbox:



If you have anything else you wish to add to the post, skip a line or two and add it in. The space helps to break up the post so its easy to read.

Finally, scroll down below the text box, and hit either "preview post" if you wish to ensure you did it right first, or "submit thread" if you are confidant and ready to post it now.

And thats it for quoting manually from the text box! In the next post, I will cover how to quote directly from the thread you are in.

Continuing - How to Quote from the Thread Itself

okay, so we covered how to quote manually. I bet you are thinking "well it would be easier if i could just click a button and quote the person who posted before me)ect).

There is absolutely a way to do this, and Im going to cover that right now.

First, in the thread you are reading and wish to reply to, find the post you wish to quote. Look for the quote button below the post. It is one of the buttons off to the bottom right of the post itself.



Now, this part is easy peasy!

Simply click that button. What will happen is it will take you to the text box, where you will see something like this:



finally, if you wish to add your comments afterward, simply skip a few lines for spacing, and type whatever it is you wish to say. Then all you have to do is scroll down below the reply window, and hit either "Preview post" to check if you did it right and it looks good, or "Submit Reply" to post then and there. And that is how to quote from a thread!

The Elusive Multi-Quote - No Need To Be Afraid!

Alot of people get intimidated by multi-quoting, and thus do not use it, because if you arent sure how to it can sort of confusing. Here I am going to try to explain how to do this so it is less confusing!

Firstly, Multi-Quoting is done directly from the thread you wish to reply to. At the end of every post in the thread, you should see the following:



that is the button you will use to "multiquote".

Do you remember how I showed you to quote someone directly from the thread, in the post previous to this? Multi quote works much the same way, except you click those quote marks on EVERY POST you wish to have quoted. Lets say you wished to quote the last three posters on the following thread:
(click the link or right click and open in a new window or tab so you dont lose this page!)

http://forums.psychcentral.com/showt...83#post1350283

Here is what you would do:




My apologies if that image is small; I was unable to make it much bigger without causing the screen to have to be bigger too!

So starting with the first post you want to quote, click those "quotes" at the bottom of each - the buttons that I've circled above.

Next, you need to go down to the bottom of the thread and click the "Add Reply" Button:



This will take you through to the Reply Text Box. You will see, as we covered previously, that there is quoted text in the box:



I added in red lines, so you can see where each of the quotes ends, and the new one starts. To reply to each, simply skip a line after each quote (the end is, again, where the [*/QUOTE] is at the end of each. Simply type your response after each quoted section. Now all you have to do is go to the bottom of the post and either PREVIEW or SUBMIT!

And there you have it, you have multiquoted!

Hmmm... For a moment I thought that my webpage appeared different.

Only now I notice that " " " option!

:-)

Here are a couple of other ways those buttons can look, depending on your appearance/skins settings:
As far as I can tell, they do the same things; they're just dressed differently.

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Edited to add:
Those pictures aren't quite current but they should still give you the general idea. For instance, there's a Hugs button that wasn't there before but it shouldn't affect any of the quoting functions.

Thanks Foolzy. I hadnt thought to add the different looks on! Muchos Gracias.