Forum archive
Formatting your posts
The discussion board used a simple formatting language, designed so that posters could lay out a message without knowing any HTML.
How the tags worked
Each formatting tag had the same shape: a backslash, a keyword, and then the text to be formatted inside braces. The keyword named the effect, such as bold text or a colour, and tags could be placed inside one another. Keywords were case sensitive, and a full list was available from the board itself.
Tags could be used in the body of a message and in the subject line. When a post was previewed, the formatting was shown as it would appear, so a poster could check the tags before publishing.
Text formatting
The common tags handled the basics: bold, italic, underline, and simple colour changes. These were the tags most posters used, and they covered the great majority of messages.
Special characters and symbols
A further set of tags produced symbols and accented characters that were awkward to type directly. They were useful for quotations in other languages and for technical writing.
Other formatting
Longer posts could use tags for lists, quotations and simple tables, and for links to other pages. Used sparingly, they made a message easier to read.
Frequently made mistakes
The usual difficulties were a keyword typed in the wrong case, braces that were not closed, and tags nested in the wrong order. Previewing a post, and reading it back before publishing, solved nearly all of them.