Quick Guide to Posting on TPF

Help
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You don’t need to know anything about Markdown (the simple formatting language used by the forum) to post on TPF—the toolbar buttons work fine, and BBCode still works too. But if you’d like a quick way to format posts using plain text, the examples below show the basics.

Bold and Italic

To make text bold:

**bold text**

To make text italic:

*italic text*

Quoting Someone

You can select text in any post and click the Quote button, but if you want to quote something else (an external source, for instance), or if you just want to do it manually, you can do this:

To quote a line, put > at the start:

> This is a quoted sentence.

To form a multi-paragraph quotation, do it like this:

> First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here.
> 
> Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here.

This will be rendered as follows:

First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here. First paragraph goes here.

Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here. Second paragraph goes here.

Optionally you can include an attribution like this:

> This is a wise statement.
>
> --- Prof. Sophia Dialectica, _Collected Statements_

This will be rendered as follows:

This is a wise statement.

— Prof. Sophia Dialectica, Collected Statements

Links

To add a link:

[Text of link](https://example.com)

Example:

[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://plato.stanford.edu)

Lists

Bullet list:

- First item
- Second item
- Third item

Numbered list:

1. First item
2. Second item
3. Third item

Code or Technical Text

For short code or filenames, use backticks:

`like_this`

For longer code blocks, use the Preformatted Text button in the editor.

Headings

You can create a heading with #:

# Big heading
## Smaller heading
### Even smaller heading
#### Even smaller heading than *that*

Paragraphs

Leave a blank line between paragraphs, or they may run together.

Tip

If you’re unsure, just write normally and post. You can always edit your post afterwards.

2 Likes
How do you put links in a post?
2

How does one post mathematical expressions on this new site?

3

Ctrl-Shift-M brings up a box you can enter LaTeX in. (Ctrl-M toggles between the dual-pane compose/preview editor, and the single-pane rich editor.)

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1. Inline

You can write an equation, such as E=mc^2, inline by writing $E=mc^2$

2. In a block

You can create a block by writing something like this:

$$
\sqrt{(-1)} \; 2^3 \; \sum \; \pi
$$

which renders like this:

\sqrt{(-1)} \; 2^3 \; \sum \; \pi

3. Using the keyboard shortcut

Press Ctrl + Shift + M

This brings up Insert Inline Math box.

4. Using the toolbar

You can also add a block from the toolbar using the Insert Math function.

insert-math-mh
insert-math-mh930×557 54.8 KB


For more information see here:
1 Like
5

Just learnt something neat. Discourse displays quotes putting a ‘>’ against the first line. But if you want to display a quote which has line breaks, you need to put a > in between the two lines, which will give you a break between the two paragraphs without starting a new quote box.

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Yeah, it’s in the OP. Generally, all standard Markdown will work, because that’s the main post-formatting system on Discourse. On the last forum it was just BBCode, which is much more cumbersome.

This:

*Italic text*

is much better than this:

[i]Italic text[/i]

Since I do all of my writing in Markdown, one of the things that frustrated me about Plush was that it didn’t support it, and I often had to use a less-than-perfect Markdown ↔ BBCode converter.

(Of course, you can use the toolbar buttons but it’s annoying to have to reach for the mouse in the middle of typing)

EDIT: I just saw on the Markdown guide that you can easily do nested quotes like this:

> Dorothy followed her through many of the beautiful rooms in her castle.
>
>> The Witch bade her clean the pots and kettles and sweep the floor and keep the fire fed with wood.

Dorothy followed her through many of the beautiful rooms in her castle.

The Witch bade her clean the pots and kettles and sweep the floor and keep the fire fed with wood.

1 Like
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:blush: So it is. Serves me right for not reading more carefully. That nested quote is really neat.

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Both here and on the old place you can do CTRL+I, CTRL+B, CTRL+U (CMD on Mac) for italics, bold, and underline.

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Yes. I prefer not to use them, since usually when I write Markdown I’m in an application in which I’ve set up lots of shortcuts already. It’s easier to write in exactly the same way everywhere.

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Speaking of Markdown apps - one I’ve discovered that may be of interest to Mac/iPhone users.

I’ve got a cool markdown editor and text tool called Bear App. I think it has a small subscription charge through the Apple Store. What’s good about it: you can copy-and-paste to and from TPF and it preserves all of the same markup conventions (bold, italic, etc) It works well on desktop and iOS and is cloud-based, so anything you’re working on will be available on all your devices.

Especially useful for composing long posts or complex replies.

More info at https://bear.app/

1 Like
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I have nothing against such apps—if you’re going to be writing a lot of Markdown they make it comfortable, and I have my own special setup in VS Code—but I’d just like to point out that, since Markdown is plain text, you can use any text editor, including the most basic ones like Notepad, TextEdit, and nano.

I say this just to emphasize that Markdown is not just an alternative to Word; it means you don’t need to use any special application at all, beyond the most basic.