How To Format Comments

I’ve recently gotten several questions along this line, so I thought it would be helpful to have a reference page to show people how to format their comments. All content on a web page is rendered with HTML, so we can use HTML tags to handle basic text formatting. ** Notice that these tags work like parentheses — your content goes inside them. Also notice that the closing tag is identical to the opening tag, EXCEPT there is a “/” at the beginning of the word or letter.

Bold

If you’d like to make part of your text bold, simply do this:
<strong>This text is bold</strong>

And you get this: This text is bold

Italicize

If you’d like to italicize something, simply do this:
<em>This text is italicized</em>

And you get this: This text is italicized (** the “em” stands for “emphasis”)

Underline

To underline, try this (may not work on all sites):
<u>This text is underlined</u>

And you get this: This text is underlined

Strike Through

Sometimes, when you’re writing a sentence, it’s fun to give the impression that you started to write one word, but then chose another. You can accomplish that in this way:
Ah, what an <del>insipid</del> insightful comment!

And you get this: Ah, what an insipid insightful comment!

Quote

If you want to insert a famous quote, or just quote something that was said in a previous comment, do this:
<blockquote>Four score and seven years ago...</blockquote>

And you get this:

Four score and seven years ago…

Links

If you’d like to insert a link to another page, you can do that too by using an “anchor” tag. But be careful — too many links and WordPress will think your comment is spam.
<a href="http://google.com">Google</a>

And you get this: Google

Just remember to always put in your closing tag, or things will start to look really funky! Hope this helps — happy commenting!

Images and Videos

WordPress has actually made it pretty easy to post images and videos. Initially, I thought this functionality was disabled, because it doesn’t allow the HTML tags for them, but all you have to do is post the link to the image or video that you’d like to reference, and it will show up. That’s literally all you have to do. Find a video or image, and paste its URL into a comment.

Edit: When I’m writing HTML, I often find it useful to go ahead and type in the closing tag right after I’ve typed in the opening tag. Then I go back and put whatever content I need in between them. I’ve found that cuts down tremendously on the number of mistakes I would otherwise make.

43 thoughts on “How To Format Comments”

  1. you can also do it as HTML:

    A bullet point list would be structured like this:
    <ul>
    <li>The text of the first bullet point…</li>
    <li>The text of the second bullet point…</li>
    </ul>

    The “ul” stands for “unordered list,” and the “li” stands for “list item.” To do a numeric list, use “ol” (“ordered list”) instead of “ul”.

    It’s best not to do them this way though, unless you’re very comfortable with HTML. Because if you forget any of those opening or closing tags, you’re just going to have a mess.

    This is how they render, by the way:

    • The text of the first bullet point…
    • The text of the second bullet point…
    1. Text of the first numbered item…
    2. Text of the second numbered item…

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  2. Also, I made a slight typo in that last comment. I’ve corrected it, but if you’re referring to this in your email, you’ll want to check out the actual web page to see the correct syntax.

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  3. I wondered about that when I read the email, but thought, “Well, Nate would know more about it than I do –“

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  7. Yeah, but WP doesn’t allow for underlining. Just another thing I hate about it.

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  9. Whoops … maybe it doesn’t on comments. I know it does when writing posts cuz I just tested it. Trying something else — underline

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  15. Well, there. I see you posted these in 2013 and I’m just getting the hang of it now. OK, so I’m a slow learner . . . Or maybe just a procrastinator . . .at any rate, it’s clear that I can learn. 🙂

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