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Indenting a line with 4 spaces on HN disables word wrap, making your comment very difficult to read on mobile. We run into this problem all the time. HN really

• mikenew 9y ago
  It also clips the text about 2/3rds of the way across the screen horizontally, so you have to scroll back and forth in this tiny box to read it.
• justin66 9y ago
  > HN really needs some markup for quotes. Italics work fine.
  • thomastjeffery 9y ago
    Except when you want to keep the italics that are already inside the quote. It's also clear that people expect some kind of markup, which is why they often mistake fixed-width markup for quote markup.
    • justin66 9y ago
      > Except when you want to keep the italics that are already inside the quote. If you're sure it actually matters you can turn off the italics around the portion that was originally italicized, which isn't typographically correct but it gets the point across. Italics are the happy medium between something perfect which hasn't been implemented (or described) yet and the visual diarrhea people sometimes post.
      • thomastjeffery 9y ago
        Yes, there are workarounds. My entire point is that people choose code formatting as a workaround, and that isn't viable. We really ought to fix the problem, rather than complain every time someone uses the wrong workaround. The latter isn't a scalable or effective solution. HN has a wonderfully succinct amount of markup, but it's really lacking in this one particular area.