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Re: Formatting Tipsby ELISHEVA (Prior) |
on Feb 18, 2009 at 08:22 UTC ( [id://744687]=note: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
One solution might be to provide, just below the edit box, a prominent link to an even simpler guide to formatting than we already have. Yes, some people just don't care, but based on the number of poorly formatted posts, the failure of people to fix them on their own, and quotes from posts like this one: Not everyone is conversant with HTML, and, for the occasional posting, I don't want to go through the "approved html tags" list or the like. Source: Wiki-Style syntax for posting, by Anonymous MonkI suspect information overload is at least one reason why people can't be bothered. The key is to focus on the absolute essentials. Here is an example of what I mean. The title is intentional and the entire post teaches only two tags at a level that I hope even the most HTML inept among us can understand. Many of you have a much better sense of humor than I, so perhaps you can improve on it: The Braindead Guide to Formatting your PostWelcome to the Monastery! At Perl Monks we use a wierd combination of HTML and wiki-style mark-up to format our posts, but you can ignore that for now. To make nice posts readable by all you only need to learn two things:
Just to give you an idea of why this is so important, here's a post where someone forgot the formatting. Let's see if you can read it:
No? Its pretty hard to answer a question you don't understand, so you aren't like to get many answers. You want answers? yes? Here is what you can do to make things more readable:
Now for your code sample or screen output. That also has a start and an end, but we use "c" for code rather than "p" for paragraph. So to add code to your post:
And here is what you should see in your edit box:
And this is what the actual post looks like when you hit that "Create" or "update" button:
Now isn't that better? Which version do you think is likely to get lots of readers, and lots of answers? The moral of this story? Use <p> and <c> tags. They are easy! And you'll get happy monks giving all sorts of answers, and that will make you happy. Best, the Monks at the Monastery
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