A little bit of computer code for posting comments

The following is optional for any comments and discussion you post on the blog:

Em dash: Sometimes you introduce in your text an aside or otherwise break—up—the—flow—like Will—iam—Shatner. You can mark such with the em dash (which looks like a longer hyphen). When you want this punctuation to appear, just type the following six characters after the colon: & # 1 5 1 ; (though leave out the spaces). So, ampersand, pound, one, five, one, semicolon. Em dashes are also good in case you get interrup—

Italics as emphasis: If you would like text in your comments to appear italicized, like I have just made them, you can use some simple html language. Put <em> before the text you wish you ‘italicize’. Then when you want the ‘italics’ to stop, you can put /em, making sure to put <> around “slash em”. Hope that makes sense and allows you to express yourself more naturally!

Boldface: If you would like to bold your remarks, you can do so, as well. Put <strong> before the text you wish you bold. Then when you want the bold to stop, you can put /strong, making sure to put <> around “strong”.

Blockquoting text: Here’s how: Type the single word <blockquote> at the beginning of the long passage you want to quote. Then, just end with a /blockquote within the same punctuation (i.e., <>) when you’re done. Feel free to quote fellow students or passages in the texts you read.

Block quotes will look like this bit of text. They are used when the quoted material is too long simply to fit in double quotation marks within the body of the text. Such passages are, of course, still worthy of quote, but their length suggests an even more special import that deserves them being set apart in block format. There are no quotation marks for block quotes as per APA style (despite what a particular WordPress graphic may suggest). Block quotes are more than 40 words in length.