How To Use Quotes
Introduction
The Quote BBCode system is extremely useful for maintaining clarity in forum topics, but many users struggle with how to use it, hence this guide.
The Quote BBCode is in essence quite simple, it just looks complicated in it's full form. Most of the time you can use the forum software to automatically do all the work for you so you don't need to learn the syntax, though it can help to know what you're looking for when editing a set of nested quotes for clarity.
Command Syntax
Basic Quote
[quote]quotedText[/quote]
Quote with author (quotee) information
[quote=authorName]quotedText[/quote]
or
[quote author="authorName"]quotedText[/quote]
Full Quote containing user, post and date information
Nobody in their right mind would ever enter this form manually, but it is the form that the forum will use when you click on a quote button so it's included here for completeness.
[quote author="authorName" link=topic=topicNumber.postNumber#postLink date=topicDate]quotedText[/quote]
How to add a Quote
Manually add a quote
In a reply box, type out the quote in one of the three forms specified in the Command Syntax above. Use the preview button to check that you have correctly entered the quote and once you're happy, click the "Post" button to submit your reply.
Automatically add a quote
This is the option that will be used most of the time. It is far easier to allow the forum software to do the quoting for you.
The easiest way to quote a previous post is to think ahead and instead of using the "reply" button at the bottom of the topic or the quick reply box, use the "quote" link instead. This will act like the reply button but will insert a quote containing the post you are replying to.
If you have already started your reply, you can still insert a quote by scrolling down the page history to find the quote that you wish to insert. The quote will be inserted where your cursor is in the reply box. This enables you to place the quote at the top of your post, or after some text that you have typed in already. Of course, you can insert several quotes this way but be careful to position the cursor exactly where you want the quote to appear.
Nested Quotes
If you use the quote button to reply to a post that already has a quote within it, then the system will automatically nest the quotes.
Although this is ok with one or two nested quotes, it soon becomes tiresome to read so please edit out the previous quotes to just leave the part of the post that you are actually replying to.
Use the preview button before posting to check that you have made the edit correctly.
Do not change the actual quoted content
It goes without saying that is bad form to change the content of text within quotes, as this rather defeats the object of quoting. Please refrain from doing this.