Moderator post: Please avoid excessive text formatting

[ron_newman]

I've seen a few complaints about this lately, so I'd like to propose a new rule:

Please keep text formatting to an essential minimum when posting to davis_square. In particular, please try not to do not:

- specify an explicit <font> face, size, or color, especially at the outermost (top) level of your post
- paste formatted text into the Rich Text editor from Microsoft Word or another word processor

Doing these things often makes your post less readable on other people's friends pages, or results in text that looks too big or too small on some screens. In at least one case, I recall it generating huge numbers of blank lines at the end of a post, because of a <span> or <div> tag that got pasted in from Microsoft Word.

Thanks for your cooperation. After some discussion here, I'll probably add this to the rules on the community's profile page.

Comments

[haptotrope.livejournal.com]

woo! keep myspace off of LJ!

There is no try

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I would amend that "Try not to" to "Do not". :)

Re: There is no try

[ron_newman]

Edited.

Re: There is no try

[cos]

I wouldn't be completely absolute about that. Sometimes it makes sense. Colors are a bad idea because you don't know what color someone else's style uses, but if you want to add an in-place footnote in a smaller size that seems sensible, for example.

Re: There is no try

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Isn't that what H5 is for?

Re: There is no try

[ron_newman]

I can see that. If you can suggest some appropriate wording, please do so. (I would personally use <small> rather than an explicit <font size=N> tag for that purpose.)

Re: There is no try

[cos]

I'd use something like <span style="font-size:0.8em"> but people have different styles :)

Re: There is no try

[hakamadare.livejournal.com]

I'd use something like <span style="font-size:0.8em"> but people have different styles :)

perhaps something like <span style="font-size:smaller"> (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/fonts.html#font-size-props) might be more portable?

-steve

Re: There is no try

[cos]

em units are relative to the em size of the container, so that's also portable. Boy are we on a tangent!

Re: There is no try

[nowalmart.livejournal.com]

I realize this is entirely off-topic, but I really feel like people use CSS and styles at the expense of good-old HTML.

In your example, I have set the default text size in my browser for a reason - I find larger text is easier (and faster) for me to read.

I understand the need for things like footnotes and so on, but rather than deciding that footnotes should be 80%, how about you use the intended tags (for example <sup> and <sub>) and allow my HTML render engine to decide how to render a footnote - maybe as smaller text, maybe as something in brackets.

I am not saying that developers should not use CSS and styles. There is definitely a need for CSS and styles, but oftentimes I feel like they are used at the expense of the correct markup tags.

Re: There is no try

[cos]

Very often the "intended tags" aren't meant for the specific purpose the person has in mind. You're being distracted by the term "footnote", but it is often the case that I want 20% reduced size text. Relative sizes should work just fine with whatever custom default size you use.

[ecdysiasm.livejournal.com]

YES! Absolutely in support of this one.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Looks good to me!

[ron_newman]

Just to clarify, these are some examples of things that are best not to do here:

one
two (note complaints in comments; the poster has since mended his/her ways)
three
four
five (this one produced huge numbers of blank lines on some friends pages)

[cos]

Agreed on all of those.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

What is wrong with the first one? All I notice is the subject line is in a larger font and bolded.

[ron_newman]

It was posted with <font size=1> which results in very small text on my screen (and probably many other peoples').

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it looks like maybe 8-point text to me, nothing out of the ordinary.

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

Basically, your browser is reading that tag differently than ron_newman's. Some kinds of tags are very flexible, and standard web language--all browsers can read them, and the browsers interpret those tags in a way that accounts for the user's preferences. Some are very specific, and so they show up differently on browsers with different settings. This is not so good, because what looks fine to the creator of a text may be an illegible mess on a browser they don't use, and they won't realize.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, out of all the things that could use improvement here, why is this even on our radar?

[ron_newman]

It's not a huge deal, but it has repeatedly caused complaints here. Elaborate HTML formatting doesn't play well with LJ's allowing every user to set his/her own style for reading friends' posts.

[zmgmeister.livejournal.com]

I remember one time somebody dared to highlight something in blue text, but that's about it.

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to say it's worth addressing, and since it's definitely comm-pertinent! I'm no expert--I'm barely a beginning--but my grad program makes all new students take some tech overview workshops that have helped me to understand the nature of this sort of complaint, and why the complaints are valid. If you use bad coding or inappropriate coding--especially not really knowing what you're doing--you can really screw up the way someone else's browser reads your text. This can be a minor inconvenience, or it can make the material totally inaccessible to a particular user. With LJ flists, that sort of thing gets really annoying, because you have to either stop loading the page or go change your settings and reload before the text stops being screwy. Why risk giving other people unnecessary headaches when you can follow simple guidelines to avoid that happening?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hate that special-text stuff with a passion (unless used sparingly, for, say, footnote-type bits.)

[303-5.livejournal.com]

I think the rule is fair enough, though as a poster of one of the example posts, above, I'll offer the perspective of a first-time creator of a new post. I find much of the framework and structure of LJ confusing and non-intuitive and my added text formatting was inadvertent--I was fumbling my way through trying to "make it look right" after a few screw ups in trying to create the post. Nevertheless, I'll try to refrain from unnecessarily hitting any of the format buttons in the future.

While I support constructive feedback to perceived offenders, I would also hope that there remain mercy for what I am sure are other oft-frustrated folks still trying to figure out the LJ system (and formatting in general).

And, for now, I'll leave the original post with the bad formatting so that I don't ruin the example.

[303-5.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that I think about it, my original text may have been copied and pasted from Microsoft Word (I don't fully remember)--that may have been where I initially went wrong.

[ron_newman]

Thanks for your gracious reply. I did not intend to call you out intentionally. I'm just hoping that if we put a rule like this in the community profile, new users will be less likely to do this in the future.

As a Mac Safari user, I never see LJ's Rich Text editor. Even Firefox on the Mac doesn't accept formatted pasting from word processors. Until recently, I didn't realize that the Rich Text editor was the likely cause of these posts.