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

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.