THE MCJ

Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible. - Søren Kierkegaard

HOW TO FORMAT COMMENTS

Some people have been having a little trouble with formatting comments at this site so here are some basics.  To format your comments or add links here, you have to type in the HTML yourself.  Thus, if you want to put in a break between paragraphs, type <p> where you want the break to go. 

Links are added this way.  If you want a word or words to be a link to another site or story, type the following:

<a href="http://www.thesiteyouwanttolinkto.com">the word or words you want to serve as your link</a>

If you want the link to open in a new window, type:

<a href="http://www.thesiteyouwanttolinkto.com" target="_blank">the word or words you want to serve as your link</a>

Other ways to format text:

Italics - <em>word or words</em>

Bold text - <strong>word or words</strong>

Bold italics - <em><strong>word or words</strong></em>

Underlined text - <u>word or words</u>

Bold italic underlined text - <em><strong><u>word or words</u></strong></em>

Text with a line drawn through it - <strike>word or words</strike>

A sentence or paragraph indented to set it apart from the main comments, for example, a long quote - <blockquote>word or words</blockquote>

Three other things about commenting here.  Comments on this site are not moderated for two reasons.  This is a one-man operation and I don't have the time.  And I think that as long as they're civilized, people ought to be allowed to say what's on their minds even if that means they disagree with something I've written.  If I think a comment is over the line or too far off-topic, I will pull it.  It's extremely rare but it has happened.

Every now and then, the system gets a little goofy.  So if you ever get The Error Message From Hell(you'll know it when you see it) and eventually find that you've posted a comment multiple times, don't worry about it.  It's an easy thing to fix.  I'll remove the extras if I catch them and if I miss them, it's not that big of a deal.

And if you enter a long URL in a comment and find later on that I've turned it into a link, that's only because of another system peculiarity.  When very long URL's show up in Recent Comments, they can throw the page display off in Internet Explorer(not Firefox for some reason).  So if you forget how to put in a link, go ahead and put in the URL.  I'll fix it as soon as I see it and if I don't, the page will eventually fix itself anyway.

Posted on 2/22/2007 10:29:08 PM , 36 comments

Submitted by Tom at 12/20/2006 8:39:46 AM
Muchas danke!
Submitted by DeeBee at 12/20/2006 9:20:01 AM
OK, I've just gotta try it:

Here is some bold italic underlined text with a line drawn through it that I want to serve as my link to open in a new window . . .

. . . with a paragraph break for good measure! :-)

Submitted by DeeBee at 12/20/2006 9:33:32 AM
Oops - borked the link (should have been "www.themcj.com") but everything seemed to work otherwise! Sometimes I amaze me . . .
Submitted by Ed the Roman at 12/20/2006 10:22:58 AM
OK, wjhy are my > working as desired but my < not?
Submitted by Ed the Roman at 12/20/2006 10:23:28 AM
At least not consistently.
Submitted by why1914 at 12/20/2006 11:16:59 AM
Finally, my words get the proper emphasis they deserve!
Submitted by at 12/20/2006 11:20:01 AM
yea yea yea!
Submitted by Maureen at 12/20/2006 11:33:02 AM
This is a very nice thing you've done! Of course, some of us who know HTML just like _underlining things_ the old-fashioned way. Early habits are hard to drop.
Submitted by Philip G at 12/20/2006 12:16:00 PM
Hooray & Thanks.
Submitted by Ken at 12/20/2006 12:22:25 PM
Let's see if "" works to italicize and , "" works to bold
Submitted by Ken at 12/20/2006 12:24:27 PM
Ok, they did, and the quote/unquote marks don't keep the less-than and greater-than signs from working. The italics work with "i" and bold with "b" between the less-than and greater-than signs.
Submitted by Christopher Johnson at 12/20/2006 12:30:05 PM
The idea for this was Bill(not IB)'s. At his suggestion, there's going to be a permanent link to this post in the upper-right-hand corner of the page.  I guess I ought to send him a coffee mug or something.
Submitted by cricket at 12/20/2006 12:32:48 PM
Cristopher, nice job. Just don't tell anyone how to include the tags ( <em>, <strong>, <u>, <strike>, etc.) themselves in the text. That'll be our little secret.
Submitted by Christopher Johnson at 12/20/2006 12:34:09 PM
Actually, it'll be your little secret since I don't know. :-)
Submitted by cricket at 12/20/2006 12:48:18 PM
Heh! You almost got me with that one.
Submitted by at 12/20/2006 2:02:09 PM
Merry Christmas but not happy holidays.
Submitted by ForNow at 12/20/2006 4:43:52 PM
Yes, that's what they say at the "official" html sites, use "<strong></strong>" instead of  "<b></b>" for bold and "<em></em>" instead of "<i></i>" but who cares what the html poobahs say? With even the common rabble learning html, there's bound to be lots of profligate bolding and italicizing around here, why not at least keep the markup characters sparse and laconic? Bolding can cost money!
Submitted by Connie at 12/20/2006 8:22:03 PM
Thank you very much.

Thank you very much indeed.

Submitted by Peyton at 12/20/2006 9:42:56 PM
Ed the Roman, it's because "<" is a control character, as in <b>Bold</b> is Bold. To get a "<", you have to write "&lt". The final semicolon is required. So,

< is written as &lt;
> is written as &gt;.

Finally, & is written &amp;.

My head hurts -- quick, someone, read me a TEC pronouncement!
Submitted by Peyton at 12/20/2006 9:46:50 PM
To get a "<", you have to write "&lt;". Arrrgggggghhhhhhhh!!
Submitted by KEn at 12/20/2006 10:09:51 PM
If all else fails, open the source code for the page and find an example of what you want. And Christopher... you made Amy Welborn's Open Book... how many mugs did that cost you? :-)
Submitted by Christopher Johnson at 12/20/2006 10:21:36 PM
Ken,

None at all. I couldn't believe she linked to this. And she made it sound like I actually know this stuff. :-)

Submitted by Bill (not IB) at 12/20/2006 11:10:09 PM
What's all this talk about mugs, eh?

Amazing. Of all my comments, one actually got legs. You never know........

(For what it's worth, when putting together instructions on how to post HTML, most webmasters will generally take the quick & dirty way of doing it in a graphic (JPG/GIF), so that all that's necessary is to type in the exact text needed for the explanation without playing around with the extra control characters to force display of HTML within HTML. Not that I know anything about websites...... I can't do or say anything to reveal that in real life, I'm _____________ , who is a ________ and sidelines as a _________ . If the wrong people were to find out, THEY might come after me..... [no laughing, Christopher!])
Submitted by Bill (not IB) at 12/20/2006 11:18:38 PM
I just noticed (no "dig" intended, honest) - you forgot paragraphs and line breaks.....

which is what started the whole thing!
Submitted by ForNow at 12/21/2006 1:08:28 AM
You can learn a lot about html by playing around in Outlook Express emails. Just be sure you have a backup copy of the email that you're playing with, if the email matters at all. In Outlook Express, start a message. On the menu click on Format and click on Rich Text (HTML). Then click on View and if there's no check mark next to Source Edit, click on it.

Then, in the main body of the email, type the html code, for example, "<b>," that you want to be able paste into here. Then click on the Source button at the bottom of the email pane and you can see it there rewritten in a form ("&lt;b&gt;" in the current example) that you can paste here. You can learn a lot about html by playing around in Outlook Express emails. Again, just be sure you have a backup copy of the email that you're playing with, if the email matters at all.

YES  Type & format it, and in the source you see:
<b>YES</b>  Copy and paste the source coding into Edit, then view Source, and you see:
&lt;b&gt;YES&lt;/b&gt;  And repeat!
&amp;lt;b&amp;gt;YES&amp;lt;/b&amp;gt;  Again!
&amp;amp;lt;b&amp;amp;gt;YES&amp;amp;lt;/b&amp;amp;gt;  Yet again!
&amp;amp;amp;lt;b&amp;amp;amp;gt;YES&amp;amp;amp;lt;/b&amp;amp;amp;gt;
on and on forever!
Submitted by ForNow at 12/21/2006 1:10:39 AM
Darn, I forgot about the sidebar! Chris, please go ahead and delete my stupid previous post, or its last part which is causing the problem. Sorry about that.
Submitted by Fuinseoig at 12/21/2006 1:49:13 PM
Right, this is tempting fate on my part, because I never get things like this right, but let's try:

Should that give me a paragraph break?

Submitted by Fuinseoig at 12/21/2006 1:50:22 PM
Well, whaddya know? It worked!
Submitted by Annalucia at 12/22/2006 8:42:36 AM
Thanks for putting this up, Christopher. Now let me test and see if

the paragraphing instructions work.

Submitted by Annalucia at 12/22/2006 8:44:01 AM
It worked! Thanks Christopher.

Now I can offer comments without having them look like big blocky chunks of Old Testament Hebrew.

Submitted by Elkanah at 1/28/2007 4:31:06 PM
Testing

Testing
Testing

Submitted by Matthew at 7/13/2007 7:26:19 PM
Testing I believe in The Episcopal Polity,

Maker of my paycheck and my retirement fund

And in the Presiding Bishop, our all-wise and all-knowing Head

who was elected by the General Convention

head of a major seminary,

was once Bishop of Nevada;

was snubbed by orthodox bishops;

she descended into Africa;

came back and reneged on what she agreed to;

sued the pants off the fundies;

and sits on the right hand of David Booth Beers;

from thence she will sue the pants off of all those rightwingers until they leave (without property).

I believe in the Pension Fund;

the holy Millenium Development Goals;

the communion of the non-believers;

the non-existance of sin;

the conversion of the endowment fund;

and the party everlasting.

AMEN.

Submitted by Craig Goodrich at 10/3/2007 11:42:27 AM
One that Chris left out, because it's so easy to overuse, can cause problems if you forget something, and can mess up formatting something fierce, is the <font ... > tag --

<font size=+1 color=red face="Monotype Corsiva, Comic Sans MS, Helv" > whatever </font > -- See?

Size should be from -2 to +2; it's relative to whatever the user has chosen as "normal" in his browser preferences. "Normal" is "+0" -- always use the sign.

Color can be red, green, blue, yellow, or purple with most browsers, or darkred, darkgreen etc -- darkyellow is brown.

Face is a list of names, in quotes, separated by periods. The browser uses the first one on the list if he can find it, if not then the second one, and so on. "Helv" is Helvetica, a sans-serif like Arial that's found on non-Windows machines (e.g. Macs or Linux).

But you must promise me, my son, zat you vill use zis great power only for ze good!

Submitted by Craig Goodrich at 10/3/2007 11:47:55 AM
Whoops! I mean, of course, a list of names separated by commas -- proofreading of the text is as important as proofing of the tags...

[Sits back down in great embarrassment.]

Submitted by Been There... at 11/14/2007 5:07:41 PM
Testing

Testing

Testingtesting

Testing

Submitted by Dan at 12/22/2007 12:26:30 PM
Allowing pure html is great! But it can have its ups and downs. F'rinstance, if someone begins a tag and forgets to end it, it can wreak havoc. Embedded tables are a good example of where people easily go awry. And let's not forget JavaScript!
Name: Url:
Confirm: