If you want to make a word or phrase <b>bold</b>, you can turn the bold feature on by typing "<b>" followed by whatever you want in bold. You turn it off by typing "</b>".

If you want to <i>italicize</i> a word or phrase, you can turn the italics feature on by typing "<i>" followed by whatever you want in bold. You turn it off by typing "</i>".

By now you should see <u>the pattern</u>. You should be able to figure out how underlining works.

You can see the code in my examples, but when you use them, the code itself will be invisible. It is important to turn off your feature with the / command. For example, as shown above, to turn off italics, you need to end your italicized section with </i>. Otherwise the italics will overflow your comment and continue on to the posts and comments below. You don't want to be an HTML litterbug, so make sure you turn off the italics and other functions when you are finished with them.

You can create a link to another site by typing <a href="INSERT LINK HERE">insert what you want the link to say</a>. For example, to make the link to Admiral Quixote's Roundtable, type the following: <a href="http://www.solport.com/roundtable/">Admiral Quixote's Roundtable</a> and the result will be Admiral Quixote's Roundtable. Notice the </a> at the end, that completes the hyperlink reference.

I have found one more command to be quite helpful. You can start a new paragraph by inserting "<p>" wherever you desire a new paragraph. You can turn this off with the </p> command. However, the idea of turning off a paragraph strikes me as stupid. So in this one case, I don't bother doing so. I have not noticed any bad effects from doing so (other than making some programmers wince).

Feel free to use my comments section to try out these commands. Just remember to turn off the italics when you are done with them.