7 ms·

It is wrong to start a sentence with “but”! It is wrong to start a sentence with “and”! It is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition! It is wrong to split a

• cdancette 9y ago
  You should not quote like this, use > rather. It is unreadable on mobile, we don't want that, do we?
  • germinalphrase 9y ago
    This complaint seems to appear on a regular basis (because it's accurate). Can't we just fix that issue rather than attempting to reinforce some community norm about quote formatting?
    • IncRnd 9y ago
      > This complaint seems to appear on a regular basis (because it's accurate). Can't we just fix that issue rather than attempting to reinforce some community norm about quote formatting? As you indicate, there is nothing to fix when the complaint of incorrect usage is accurate. The markup quotes _verbatim_. Therefore quoting long lines will scroll on smaller screens. https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc * Blank lines separate paragraphs. * Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim. (This is intended for code.) * Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized, if the character after the first asterisk isn't whitespace. * Urls become links, except in the text field of a submission
      • colanderman 9y ago
        I think the "fix" GP is suggesting is for HN to add a "blockquote" syntax. i.e., make text like this: > something quoted which is very long and let's pretend it wraps lines look something like this (sans horizontal scrolling): | something quoted which is very long and | let's pretend it wraps lines I get that HN doesn't want to be markup-heavy (a sentiment with which I agree), but posters quote things all the time and it's always ugly if line wraps are involved.
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
        • krapp 9y ago
          Imageboards use that syntax for quotes as well, italicizing and changing the text color, highlighting the quoted text without the scrolling issues of a blockquote. I had a userscript doing that on HN for a while along with as other text fixes, and the result seemed quite readable.
        • IncRnd 9y ago
          That's a good idea.
      • musage 9y ago
        And then you still can't quote a poem without double line spacing, because blank lines are paragraphs, and line breaks are ignored. The HN markup is really lacking.
        • IncRnd 9y ago
          And then you still can't quote a poem without double linespacing, because blank lines are paragraphs, and line breaks are ignored. The HN markup is really lacking. Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.
          • musage 9y ago
            When the lines are short, that works, but when lines are longer, mobile users complain. You can't start a fire sitting 'round crying over a broken heart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark You can't start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart (these aren't very long I know, but it's not hard to imagine/find longer ones) And when using it for code and only code, as per "official instructions", you can't. Line 1 Line 2 > Line 1 > Line 2
            • IncRnd 9y ago
              I get it. I was showing that the double space doesn't happen between quoted lines.
        • dredmorbius 9y ago
          Markdown provides for this by double-spacing at the end of a line to indicate a hard wrap. https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#p
          • musage 9y ago
            That's genius, and would be such a neat addition to HN.
    • dredmorbius 9y ago
      I'd like to see HN get full Markdown support. I've just added the following rule to my local HN CSS stylesheet (using the Stylus CSS manager): pre { white-space: pre-wrap; } This solves the problem ... on my desktop, on a per-browser basis. I still get fuxnored viewing via mobile. My full set of mods: https://pastebin.com/jWFqQSj9 https://pastebin.com/jWFqQSj9
      • EvilTerran 9y ago
        If you're in a position to use uBlock Origin on mobile (eg, I'm using Firefox for Android), you can use its custom filters to inject arbitrary CSS. Looks like this (from my own filters): news.ycombinator.com##.comment pre:style(max-width:none!important) news.ycombinator.com##.comment code:style(white-space:pre-wrap)
  • sincerely 9y ago
    It's unreadable on desktop too, isn't it? it looks like it cuts off early
  • brudgers 9y ago
    You should not quote like this, use > rather. It is unreadable on mobile, we don't want that, do we? Is my preferred method of quoting on Hacker News.
  • musage 9y ago
    Anyone remember Opera, and the magic it could do to fit just about anything into the tiniest viewports? If a mobile browser can't handle nowrap text, demand the browser to be fixed, instead of playing whack-a-mole on every single comment. And give HN proper blockquote and inline quote styles and corresponding markup while you're at it; then non-proportional text can be used for cases where it makes sense, quotes are quotes (and can have super fancy things like italic or non-proportional text within them), and even when people use things "wrong" it's no biggie because your browser is getting the basics right.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• colanderman 9y ago
  To clarify, this is an example of something that Fowler disagrees with. "See the article fetishes for these and other such rules of thumb and for references to articles in which it is shown how misleading their sweet simplicity is." Modern linguists generally agree that it's not wrong to split an infinitive [1], and it's not wrong to end a sentence with a preposition which is part of a phrasal verb [2], or even in general [3]. Claiming otherwise is just pseudo-Latin prescriptivism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Current_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Current_views [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preposition_stranding#Opinions_for_and_against https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preposition_stranding#Opinions...
• dredmorbius 9y ago
  It is wrong to format an HN textual quote as a code block ;-)