3 ms·
the english language already has characters like commas and periods to delineate sentences, inserting newlines and '>' characters is only breaking the flow. thi
by distantsounds 9y ago
the english language already has characters like commas and periods to delineate sentences, inserting newlines and '>' characters is only breaking the flow. this is really bad form.
- Dylan16807 9y agoEnglish doesn't have a standard way to do block quotes. And you definitely need block quotes when it's an entire paragraph containing its own quotes. Using ">" is just fine as a way to accomplish that goal.
- fao_ 9y agoThe newlines are for markdown not to automatically join the sentences, and the `>` is a standard internet quote colloquialism.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- colanderman 9y agoInitial > lines indicate quoted material. This is extremely common in e-mail. Because the developers of Hacker News have chosen not to implement block-quote markup, this is what we are stuck with. (The alternative being unreadable-on-mobile code blocks.)
- robinduckett 9y agoThis is Markdown formatting. The comment boxes on reddit support it, as does the text post box on hacker news, but not the comment boxes. A shame really.