Message Formatting Tips

Advanced Messaging
Formatting Tips

This message board does offer some additional options for formatting your message postings. Due to security concerns, and past user abuse, general users are not allowed to post any HTML code to format their messages. Gold Club Members however, can format their messages any way they choose with HTML formatting tags. For help in some basic HTML formatting syntax, scroll down for some helpful pointers.
All users are welcome to include emoticons in their messages to help accurately display an intended tone, or as a simple way to decorate up a message more. You all know emoticons ... practically everyone uses :-) or :-( to signify being happy or sad in an e-mail or message posting. Well now, if you include those in your messages to this message board, they will automatically be replaced with more visible images, some of them animated, to create much nicer looking messages. :-) and :-( would automatically be replaced by and . And those aren't the only ones ... there's a ton of different emoticons that I support on this message board, and all you have to do is include the shorthand in your message postings, and they will be replaced with icons showing a range of emotions ... from anger to crying, from being sick to being shocked, they are all here.
The listing below shows the shorthand and descriptions along with the various emoticons available on this message board. Just remember that you must enter one of the variations exactly as entered here to have it replaced with the appropriate emoticon.

EMOTICONS

SHORTHAND IMAGE REPLACEMENT DESCRIPTION

*:-O Alarmed

>:( Angry

>:-( Angry, Mad

|-| Asleep

|-O Asleep/Bored

|-o Asleep/Bored

|^O Asleep/Snoring

:-D Big Smile on my Face

@@^^@@ Burning Mad / Mad As Hell

:-U-U-: Cheers, Have A Drink

<:)- Clown, Ridiculous

%-) Confused/Crazy

%-( Confused/Crazy

8-) Cool

:-/ Crazy, Confused

:,-( Crying

:,( Crying

>:-) Devilish Grin

>;-) Devilish Wink

:o} Embarrassed

>=) Evil

>:-@ Extremely Angry, Pissed Off

:-,) Feeling Sick

:-,| Feeling Sick

:-X Kiss or Blowing Kiss

:* Kiss or Blowing Kiss

(:-* Kissing

_+] Knock Individual Over The Head

:D Laughing, Big Smile

>:) Little Devil

(vv) Moon Individual

&8-| Nerd

:->=> Read/Reading A Book

(:-D) Really Large Smile or Big Mouth

:-( Sad

:( Sad, Disappointed

:-# Said Something Should Not Have or Disgust

(:+( Scared

8O Shocked

:z Sick

%-/ Sick/Throwing Up

X-| Sick/Throwing Up

:-) Smile, Happy

:) Smile, Happy

:-Q Smoking

:-] So Surprised Jaw Hits The Ground

:-P Sticking Tongue Out At You

:-O Surprised

:-o Surprised

:+v Thumbs Down / Disapproval

:-@ Very Angry or Screaming

/oO/ Very Drunk

:-~~ Waving Hello or Goodbye

;) Wink

;-) Wink

/:-( Worried

FOR GOLD CLUB MEMBERS ONLY!
Gold Club Members also have the additional option to use HTML formatting tags in their messaging to add much different formatting. Obviously, HTML tags can become very advanced, allowing even the inclusion of a web page from another source or changing the background of your message post from the standard one provided. There are certainly a variety of references available everywhere, both in print and on the web, to help you learn HTML. But the majority of them do not apply to your regular average day use of this message board ... you may just wish to do some basic formatting of your posts to make them standout. And here is where I can help you somewhat with that. Here are some examples of how to include the most basic of HTML tags to get formatting elements like bold, italics, underlining for emphasis, font sizes, etc in your message posts.

One basic thing to remember in almost all HTML formatting ... it basically begins with a starting "tag" and an ending "tag", and especially in some of the basic formatting we discuss here, all the text included between the starting and ending tag is what is formatted. In the examples below, HTML tags that you would need to use are in blue, and all the black text would be the portions of the message you want formatted. For example, making your text is simply by placing a starting tag at the start of the text to be bold, and a at the end of the text. If you wish to apply more than one kind of formatting to the same group of text, simply have all your starting tags at the front, and the ending tags at the end IN OPPOSITE ORDER. See example below.

TO MAKE TEXT BOLD:
TO MAKE TEXT BOLD
TO MAKE TEXT ITALIC:
TO MAKE TEXT ITALIC
TO MAKE TEXT UNDERLINED:
TO MAKE TEXT UNDERLINED
TO MAKE TEXT BOLD & ITALIC:
TO MAKE TEXT BOLD & ITALIC
TO MAKE TEXT LARGER:
TO MAKE TEXT LARGER
(Font sizes can go up to +4)
TO MAKE TEXT COLORED:
TO MAKE TEXT COLORED
(You can specify the most basic colors by their name. More advanced shadings of color require a six-digit color code ... there are a number of resources on the web which provide listings of all the various color codes available. Red's color code for example is FF0000.)
Those are just some of the basics. You can discover a lot more about HTML in a variety of different resources, and Gold Club Members are welcome to use HTML formatting tags (formatting only, no malicious tags!) in their posts anytime they wish.