Basic Formatting

updated on Mar 23, 2008 11:31 PM CDT

A basic guide to formatting using the Auto Format feature on South Side Sox.

Paragraphs and line breaks

In order to start a new paragraph, simply press Enter twice. To insert a line break, press Enter once. Note that text will automatically wrap to fit the size of the screen, so line breaks like that are generally unnecessary. In most cases, you shouldn't need to hit Enter at all except for paragraph breaks.

Bold and Italics

If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, you can type it into the text box surrounded in asterisks (*), *like this*. This will cause the text between the asterisks to be rendered in bold type. Similarly, you can also enter text between underscores (_) or slashes (/), _like this_ /or this/, in order to render the given text in italics.

Making links

Of course, you can't post on the Web without needing to insert a link every now and then. Creating a link is as simple as typing in the URL (the address shown in your browser's toolbar at the top of the window). Auto Format mode will automatically turn all URLs into links. For example, if you were to type the following text:

This website runs weblog software from http://scoop.kuro5hin.org.

the resulting comment will look like this:

This website runs weblog software from http://scoop.kuro5hin.org.

Of course, it's not always desirable to have the text of the link be the same as the target of the link. You can use brackets ('[' and ']') in order to specify both the link text and link target. For example, if you wanted the text "This search engine" to point to http://www.google.com/, you would type the following:

[This search engine http://www.google.com/]

Which will render like so:

This search engine

Making lists

You can create bulleted lists by entering a series of lines starting with an asterisk followed by a space ('* '). Numbered lists can be created similarly, by typing a series of lines beginning with a number follwed by a period ('1. '). For example, typing in the following text:

I had these items for breakfast this morning:
* Eggs
* Bacon
* Toast
* Hot grits

will give the following result:

I had these items for breakfast this morning:

Eggs
Bacon
Toast
Hot grits

Basic HTML

For those of you with basic HTML knowledge, the Auto Format feature will also recognize the following tags

<a href=URL></a> and <a name> for links
or for bold text
 or for italic text
 for line breaks
 for paragraphs
<ul><ol> and <li> for lists

Perhaps the most useful bit of code is the blockquote. (Those little grey boxes of quoted text.) They really are quite easy to produce.

For example, typing <div class=blockquote>some text</div> will yield

some text

Pre-formatted text
Another useful tool is pre-formatted text, which is simply mono-spaced text that allows you to easily create tables such as this one.

Team (Top 3) Total RBI Team Total % Tampa Bay 109 213 51.2% LA Angels 109 223 48.9% Chicago Sox 134 278 48.2%

I find the easiest way to create a table like this one is to use an external text editor such as Notepad. You'll want to use a monospace editor, not a dynamic one like Office. The text boxes on SouthSideSox are monospace, but I've found they are often not wide enough for me to easily align my columns.

I create my table in Notepad, then simply copy and paste it into the SouthSideSox text box. To achieve the pre-formatted text all you need to do is place your monospaced table between open and closed <pre></pre> tags.