Discussion Administrivia / TextFormattingRules

I know strikethrough text is only supposed to be used in forums, but can I use it when the vote count is mentioned in Survivor, specifically when the votes are nullified due to an idol or advantage?

I keep trying to do the double backslash in the trope launch pad, but it doesn't work. It keeps auto-editing it to one backslash.

Placing superscripts inside large text (with AC:) seems to cause a line break.

For example, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 ³²) places the closing bracket on the next line.

Is there a way to fix this?

Is there a way to underline text?

Is the AC tag supposed to insert line breaks before and after the bolded text, or is it a bug of some kind?

For some reason bolding and italicizing words only works like the half the time for me. I use ''' and it sometimes just does not register. And then it just doesn't work at all when editing on mobile.

How does one format song quotes?

The folders should really be organized — there are a great deal of them, and it's hard to find what you're looking for. Alphabetizing them wouldn't be hard, or if someone could organize them by broader subjects that would be fine too.

Should I alphabetize them?

I'm a bit unsure how quotes from movies / series etc. that don't have the name of the speaker in front of them should be formatted. This appears especially on work pages or moment pages of the work.

Should it be like that (like the trope formatting for literary tropes):

1

• X happens in scene Y when Z says this:

  Blah blah blah.

Or like this:

2

• X happens in scene Y when Z says this:

  "Blah blah blah."

Or should it even be italicized like the page quote?

The description for quotes formatting says that there should be no italicization and no quotation marks for article quotes, but that's written in the section for the quotes where there is the name of the speaker in bold letters in front of the quote. So I was wondering if there are other rules for the quotes without the names.

(One could also just add the name of the speaker but especially on moment pages it might look actually better to sometimes leave the speaker away in front of the quote and just say in the description who's saying this.)

Edit: The formatting is a bit messed up but I hope it's still recognizable what I mean.

1. Is indented without quotation marks and 2. is indented with quotation marks.

Can I sort out the examples here? I noticed some of them are Forum exclusive.

Can I just mention the [softbreak] parser is weird? The [softbreak] escape stopped working on pages. When you type [softbreak] it shows up as [softbreak] on the page, history and source, as [softbreak] in the editor and as a newline in the preview. When you type [softbreak] it shows up as [softbreak] in the preview and [softbreak] on the page. The next time you open the editor it becomes [softbreak] there. The [softbreak] trick does not work on pages, but works in preview and discussions. Weird, right? This is probably not only due to the [softbreak] parser but also because of the HTML entity parser.

I've noticed some people add commented-out tropes, with two percent signs in front of the trope name but no text, to entries. Why do they do that? What's the purpose?

Are they saying the work makes use of that trope but they don't know how to describe it so they hope someone else will? Are they telling people not to bother adding that trope because when they go to edit the listing to put it in they'll find it already commented out? I don't get it.

There ought to be a warning that piped links produce erratic results if the url page name includes apostrophes or diacritical characters. Wikipedia uses both, so piped links should use a version of the url that omits them- Wikipedia will usually redirect to the actual page.

I've seen some editors make edits that simply change https links to http but nothing else. I'm guessing it's because encrypted links cause problems for some browsers and connections, but every time I see this practice there is no accompanying edit reason, and there's nothing on this page (or anywhere else on this wiki, to my knowledge) that says "don't use https links on the wiki because (reasons)".

Are weblinks here supposed to be non-SSL, and why (not)?

Is the section for Genre Box still necessary? I can't remember the last time I've seen that markup.

Is there a way to add alt text to an image?

Is there a way to fix the title of [1] without rebuilding the page from scratch? Currently it's just one long word.

I need some more clarification on using folders and heading. It's not to work when i write them down with the formatting Here's a link [1] and also do folders work in forum discussions.

When should you mark for spoilers? How much spoiler-ish is a spoiler?

Is an important and enigmatic character introduced midway though a series spoilers, for example?

I was just trying to use the "auto PM" function with the tildes the page mentions on the forum, and it doesn't seem to work.

Was it disabled at some point, or am I (and the person I was testing it with) doing it wrong?

Should there be anchor points for some of the major sections of this, to allow people to link to specific formatting tips that are necessary on whatever occasion?

We were talking about this over in the discussion of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Is there a preferred method of alphabetical order for listing tropes in TV show pages?

As a former library science student, I favor the word-by-word method used in libraries, in which shorter words come before longer words starting with the same letters—but there's also a letter-by-letter method, in which spaces are ignored and the words are alphabetized by letters only.

Whichever it is, it would be nice if it were stated somewhere clearly. I can't seem to find anything about it in a site search.

Do custom titles still not agree with slashes inside curly braces? Ran into an issue trying to pluralize Hurt/Comfort Fic.

I noticed someone changed the section on quotes so that there is a space between the dash and the speaker's name, i.e.:

instead of:

Is this really necessary? Do we have an official policy on whether there should be a space between the dash and the speaker's name or not? I can see why a space would be desirable — I suppose it's easier to read. But as someone who generally prefers not to put a space, I was wondering if we're supposed to do one or the other, or if it's according to preference.

May I add to the section about comments (made with percent signs) that they don't work in headings? Much to my chagrin? And that trying to make one with both the percent signs at the beginning will turn everything that follows — including new lines — into part of the heading, until the next heading? I discovered another bit of comment/heading weirdness, but I'm not sure how to describe it. Just seems that comments and headings don't like each other.

I have a quick question:

What if you want to add links in the spoilers section?

Is dialogue supposed to be in italics or not? I'm trying to be consistent, but I keep confusing the various rules.

A new markup for notes (very similar to hottips) has just been implemented. That should go on the page; I would do it myself, but I'm having trouble thinking of how to write it.

Also, should hottips be replaced with notes as we come across them? It seems like notes are able to do more — like potholes — but hottips are still valid and used. Thoughts?

Is it just me, or do table attributes not work?

Random question: do folders work in discussions?

EDIT: I tested on this post, and yeah, they do.

Why is there no information on the page about text colors?

Question about a text formatting convention I've seen:

Why do I see alternate versions of characters written as "alt-description!character"? This most commonly appears in the Back To The Future page for characters from different times or alternate timelines (e.g. the younger George McFly from 1955 might be written as 1955!George). It doesn't seem to have any effect on the markup, so where did this convention come from?

There's something wrong with the folders on the Funny Moments page for Atop The Fourth Wall. Even though it is clearly formatted correctly, the actual folders won't appear, instead giving us the actual formatting at the top of the page, and a huge wall of text that cannot be shortened. Please help.

Hi, I want to make a video appear on the forum but I don't know how. Everytime I try I end up with a URL instead of the video. Can someone help?

I just noticed something: Test/{{Trope}} gives Trope. Test.{{Trope}} gives Test.Trope.

On the page proper, the first is blue, the second red. Neither page exists. And when I posted it here, both are red. What the heck?

OK, strikethrough's gone. Can we have a note in this page that it used to exist, but no longer does? I just spent maybe a half-hour trying to figure out the proper syntax, trying to figure out why it wasn't working, and looking through pages for examples, only to find out that it's been removed. For others in that boat, it would be considerate to leave a note of that kind of change, rather than trying to make it look as though it never existed.

Where's the info on text sizing and colors? Because neither one is working for me using the "old" formatting methods.

What happened to the strikethrough text formatting?

the striked text disappears.

 [[ strike: the striked text disappears. ]] 

About ~: There are several places where people have linked to All The President's Men as shown. I assume this is because it has an apostrophe in it. Only when you go to the All The President's Men page, the URL says https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlemszpn5wu

I tried to fix it, but it redirected instead: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitlemszpn5wu?from=Main.AllThePresidentsMen

Can somebody help me out here? Seeing "Ptitlemszpn5wu" makes me think that something is still wrong or incomplete.

I'd like to know how they implemented the formatting because it's the strangest thing I've seen. It's not HTML or CSS (and yes, I realize HTML can include CSS) so hell if I know.

I hope this will get someone's attention; There's some kind of folder problem over on Infinity +1 Sword. I'm stumped. Somewhere along the line the folders on the page just stopped working, and I can't figure out what's wrong.

For some reason, large text won't work for me.

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Never mind, figured it out. Line breaks are two slashes and a carriage return, with no spaces.

Question on link formatting:

On the Girl Genius page, I've noticed that every so often, someone will make a massive edit to un-capitalize words like "of" and "the" in every trope name that has them (i.e. changing every name like CrowningMomentOfAwesome or PlanetOfHats into {{Crowning Moment of Awesome}} or {{Planet of Hats}}, respectively). And every so often, there'll be another massive edit that turns all those links back into plain old Wiki Word links.

Is there a favored version? I haven't found a rule anywhere, and it can be annoying to scroll through big edits in the history page trying to pick out actual new additions from countless changes in capitalization.

how do you add quoted lines from a source? (like, a speech or a dialog)

the quote block example doesn't work... trying it in the sandbox. how do you actually quote?

Are monospaced fonts available? The old method does not work.

• Lines indented with one or more spaces (or tabs) are monospace font.

Since new edits will currently clobber the big table of characters (the table comes from older pmwiki software docs, but is reapportioned for our own use thanks to a little spin I added...), you can copy and paste from this text file to get it back, if you notice it’s wrong and someone else hasn’t gotten to it yet.

http://members.cox.net/brpxqzme/tableofchars.txt