Quoting Primer and Suggestions

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@AndyWalsh,

Below is an example of the kind of posting you seem to describe as desirable, but you may not be comfortable yet with the execution of such a format:

Step 1:Below is a raw “quote” of something Joshua said, embedded in your posting above:

@AndyWalsh

This junk DNA provides a pool of potential exaptations that usually lead to an increase in complexity (constructive neutral evolution). Thus, paradoxically, a weakening of natural selection often leads to more complexity.

(The above is quote of @swamidass quoting Larry Moran, but I haven’t mastered the forum formatting sufficiently to make that clear. Thus this text, so we all know the actual source of the statements.)

STEP 2: I then hand-type the part of whole quote that Swamidass said:

@AndyWalsh

@swamidass wrote this:
**"This junk DNA provides a pool of potential exaptations that usually lead to an increase in complexity (constructive neutral evolution). Thus, paradoxically, a weakening of natural selection often leads to more complexity."

(The above is quote of @swamidass quoting Larry Moran, but I haven’t mastered the forum formatting sufficiently to make that clear. Thus this text, so we all know the actual source of the statements.)

STEP 3: I then hand-type the part of whole quote that Swamidass said:

@AndyWalsh

@swamidass wrote this:
**"This junk DNA provides a pool of potential exaptations that usually lead to an increase in complexity (constructive neutral evolution). Thus, paradoxically, a weakening of natural selection often leads to more complexity."

@AndyWalsh responded:
“The above is quote of @swamidass quoting Larry Moran, but I haven’t mastered the forum formatting sufficiently to make that clear. Thus this text, so we all know the actual source of the statements.”

Naturally, the more elaborate your quoting strategy, the longer it takes to make it comprehensible to the readers. But it is perfectly fine to just QUOTE one sentence, and then subsequent paragraphs can simply have the quoted text in basic quote marks…

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@AndyWalsh,

Just flagging another post so that you can find the “quoting tip” in its new thread!

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

There are much easier ways to do this. you should never have to type it out from scratch.

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@swamidass

There are much easier ways to do this. you should never have to type it out from scratch.

@swamidass,

The basic quote approach is sound … until you start quoting material that includes earlier quotes. Before you know it … it is no longer apparent who said what. If you know a quick way to preserve Point/Counterpoint quotes, I would be eager to see it!

[AndyWalsh]

@gbrooks9

Step 1:Below is a raw “quote” of something Joshua said, embedded in your posting above:

AndyWalsh:

This junk DNA provides a pool of potential exaptations that usually lead to an increase in complexity (constructive neutral evolution). Thus, paradoxically, a weakening of natural selection often leads to more complexity.

(The above is quote of @swamidass quoting Larry Moran, but I haven’t mastered the forum formatting sufficiently to make that clear. Thus this text, so we all know the actual source of the statements.)

Thanks for these tips.

As it turns out with a bit more experimentation, nested quotes work they way I expect automatically, when they are quotes of other forum posts. It didn’t work for the specific post I was quoting because that wasn’t a quote of another forum post, but a block quote of text from another source. Although visually both types of quotes are presented the same, they are apparently tagged differently and so the block quotes don’t nest.

[AllenWitmerMiller (Retired Professor & Minister.)]

@T.j_Runyon

Edit: I will soon update my software to fix these glitches i seem to be having.

If you are referring to the fact that the forum software incorrectly attributed Ronald’s statement to me, the easiest solution is simply to manually edit the markup tag so that his username is substituted for mine.

As a programmer, I’ve always been surprised that the forum software used at Peaceful Science and the Biologos Forum has never been patched to fix this problem. It wouldn’t be difficult to add a few lines of code to solve these attribution errors.