Formatting poems and simple HTML

For simple HTML, just type as you normally would, but remember that multiple spaces and line breaks will not show. Insert <BR> for a line break, or <P> for a paragraph break (line break + extra space). If you really need multiple spaces and line breaks to show up exactly as you typed them, such as for making a table or ASCII art, enclose that section in <PRE> and </PRE> tags. (This will also cause it to display in a monospaced font.)

If you need to type an ampersand (&), type &amp; instead. If for some reason you need angle brackets (< and >), type &lt; and &gt;. If you need to insert literal [brackets which don't create a node], use &#91; and &#93; to create them.

If you need bold or italics, enclose bold sections in <B> and </B>, and enclose italic sections in <I> and </I>. Don't forget to close these sections, or they will run on to the end of your writeup.

For poems or lyrics, put a <BR> at the end of each line except use <P> between stanzas. At the end, type <P align=right> to start a right-aligned paragraph, and put the attribution in italics. Everything until the next <P> will be right-aligned.

If you're inserting a medium-length quotation, one stanza from a song, etc., into a longer writeup, put the <BLOCKQUOTE> and </BLOCKQUOTE> tags around it to indent it nicely from the rest of the text.

And by all means, put [ and ] around meaningful words and phrases in your writeup to provide links to related nodes.

-- This nodeshell rescued by The Nodeshell Rescue Team

To create bullet lists use <li> at the start of the line and </li> at the end. This will also insert a line break as if you had used <br>. The entire list should be enclosed in <ul> and </ul>

This lets you create a list like:

• First Item
• Second Item

The HTML was

This lets you create a list like:
<ul>
<li>First Item</li>
<li>Second Item</li>
</ul>

If you use <ol> and </ol> instead then the bullets are replaced by numbering (an ordered list).

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Thanks to N-Wing for correcting my HTML.

One thing to point out which kinda annoys me about generic HTML in general: <b> and <i> are formatting tags, whereas <strong> and <em> are functional tags. Here is an example of the difference between formatting and functional:

Brave New World was a really good book.

The first emphasis is done with <i>, whereas the second is done with <em>. Now, you probably didn't see the difference - but that's because you were looking.

See, italics and bold mean nothing to blind people. Speaking web browsers can theoretically put vocal emphasis on stuff which needs to be emphasized. But if you use only the formatting (or only the functional) tags, then the semantic meaning is lost. Consider the two possibilities of how semantics must be decoded if you only use the formatting form:

*BRAVE NEW WORLD* was a *REALLY* good book.

versus

Brave New World was a really good book.

The first is where the browser needs to assume that all italics are a vocal stress. The second is where the browser needs to assume that all italics are formatting. Either way, nobody wins.

Why nobody? Well, see, it used to be the case that HTML was a markup language, not a desktop publishing language. The whole idea was that the browsers could be setup to interpret tags as was appropriate for the reader (depending on how they've set things up or whatever). Unfortunately, Netscape being half-assed and treating them as the same led to people not knowing the difference, and so now people think that EM and STRONG are just deprecated, verbose versions of I and B.

Wow, a somewhat-contextual MaggieRant(tm) for once.