You will not be able to post a comment unless you are registered with Webdiary [0]

Posting comments

Once you are logged in, you get to the comment submission boxes by clicking on any "add new comment" or "reply" button - using the "reply" button means that your comment will be listed below the one it replies to for anyone who has selected the "Threaded comments" option. If you are not logged in, you cannot comment, and choices of layout do not operate.

Webdiary has developed some conventions over time:

• the first mention of another poster's name is in bold, subsequent instances are not.
• words, names, book titles etc that are hyperlinked are in normal font.
  
• links that are not work-and/or child-friendly come with a warning.

For some background detail on what is acceptable in posting comments see: Editorial Policy [0], plus also the articles and debate on them at Comment Moderation [0] and Online abuse: making the case for civility [0]. In particular, note that we are currently restricting comments to no more than 5 per day [0] from any one 'diarist.

Using the comments box features.

Note that the comments box features do not work in all browsers, for reasons that are unclear: if they do work, there will be a line of icons above the box, whose purpose is described below ... 

Select and highlight any text then click on the corresponding icon from the menu along the top of the box to:

• make other poster's names bold,
• italicise book and film names etc,
• emphasise a point with the underlining feature,
• add numbers or bullets to your list of points,
• indent text to indicate a blockquote,
• decrease the indent to return to normal spacing
  
• add a hyperlink and choose how it opens
  
• check your spelling,
• preview your comment prior to posting.

To remove formatting, highlight the text and either:

• click the relevant button to deselect it or
• use the 'eraser' button at the far right.

Three more icons:

• to the left of the eraser, an arrow pointing up to the right - this will expand the comments box to full page size;
• just to the left of the spelling icon, an icon with some angled brackets and a page corner folded - this will switch between the WYSIWYG screen, and the HTML code of your comment;
• then to the left of the HTML icon is an image icon. This is not yet available for use.

Tips for links:

1. If you are formatting as you go, before adding a hyperlink, leave a space to return to normal text after the words you are linking or further words become part of the link.
2. if you are copying a url into the box, make sure that you do not have extra spaces: in particular, if there is a space before the "http://", then the link will not work (for the technically minded, it will actually create a link within the site, with the form "webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=%20htttp://yourURL"- where the %20 is the space ...)
   

Some further notes:

• if the feature icons are displayed, then you cannot type HTML directly into the box - the box will helpfully translate the < and > into '&lt;' and '&gt;' so that they don't get treated as HTML - to type HTML, click in the box where you want, then click on the "Toggle HTML Source" icon.
• most important: beware copying text into the box directly from the most recent versions of MS Word. In some cases this generates an enormous amount of added HTML which has to be stripped out before the comment can be posted, as it can override some of the site formatting. If you have copied stuff in from Word, click on the "Toggle HTML Source" icon and see what's there - if there's lots of stuff you didn't type, eg "<span style="FONT-FAMILY: "Trebuchet MS">", then take it out - or risk that we don't post the comment because we don't have time to take it out ourselves.
  

Also note that, if you haven't spell-checked and reread the post to check punctuation etc, and if the result needs too much work to be made readable by others, the comment won't be published.