Here’s a brief posting describing how to do formatting in comments. It may come in useful for those of you who engage in huge debates on thread comments – and I’m sorry if it seems hopelessly basic for those who have been on the net for a while.
This site, like almost all on the internet, uses a simple programming language called HTML to do formatting. You can use HTML yourself in the comments to help make it clearer when you are quoting or for emphasis.
HTML works using codes that surround the words that they refer to. Usually you have an opening tag, and a closing tag. The tags are commands surrounded by angle brackets < and > Here are some examples:
If you want to make a word bold, you put the code <b> before the word and </b> after it.
This word is <b>bold</b>
Italic uses the code <i></i>
Another handy code for comments is <blockquote> for when you want to mark out a whole paragraph as a quote. Again, you put <blockquote> at the start of the paragraph and </blockquote> at the end.
So, this:
<blockquote>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Cras nec arcu eu est condimentum tempus. Suspendisse pellentesque mattis diam. Aliquam tortor. Nunc tortor velit, fermentum et, faucibus eget, gravida ac, neque.</blockquote>
Becomes this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Cras nec arcu eu est condimentum tempus. Suspendisse pellentesque mattis diam. Aliquam tortor. Nunc tortor velit, fermentum et, faucibus eget, gravida ac, neque.
Feel free to use the comments section below to practice!



16 Comments
But you haven’t mentioned links! Are you against them in some way? Sigh!
To create a link, type:
Here is a link to <a href=”https://www.libdemvoice.org”>Lib Dem Voice</a>.
Which produces:
Here is a link to Lib Dem Voice.
I like links!
Also it would be really nice if we could employ the sarcastic strikethrough <s> in comments. I think I tried it once but it didn’t work.
<strike>test test test
test
testtestAha!
So if I’m feeling bold I can tell you all my big ideas. For instance, when workers go on
strikeit seems to anger people whose views slant to the right.Or for added emphasis
So Blink, thankfully, doesn’t work.
Well big seems to have been disabled, but has small?
booo!
If I want to use something more than plain text in a comment I compose it in Blogger, then copy the HTML and paste that.
OK, just how much HTML can it take, hmm..
abc
d
e
f
It looked much nicer in the preview …
Hooray! Thank you!! But I think Jonathan’s idea around composing in blogger and then copying over is also a good one!
All adults (%) Leave voters (%) Remain voters (%)
The economy 34 3 67
The ability of Britain to
make its own laws 29 53 2
Immigration 20 34 4
National security 4 1 7
The NHS 4 3 4