Writing Guide Entries or Postings in plain text is really, really easy. Just type the text you want and it will appear as you type it... and that's about it!

Switching to Plain Text Mode

If you're posting to a Conversation, then you can only write your Postings in plain text (as opposed to GuideML). However, if you're writing a Guide Entry, you have a choice of two modes:

• Plain Text
• GuideML

To create a Guide Entry in Plain Text mode (which is the default), simply click the 'Plain Text' button below the main entry window in the Guide Entry Editor, and click on the 'Change Style' button.

How to Write in Plain Text Mode

Here are some tips to make your Postings more readable.

• You don't need to press Return or Enter at the end of each line; type paragraphs as continuous lines and h2g2 will take care of line breaks (just like in a word processor).

• If you want to start a new paragraph, press Return or Enter twice.

• Smileys are automatically translated into nifty little graphics - you can see a complete list of smileys here or by clicking on any smiley in a Posting or Guide Entry.

• If you type any of the following into a plain text Guide Entry, they will automatically be translated into links to the relevant area of h2g2. You can find out more about what these mean in the section on h2g2 URLs.

  • A123456 (but only if it's a valid entry number)
  • U123456
  • F123456
  • F123456?thread=123456...
  • C123456

• To put links to named h2g2 pages into your entry, you should use the <./> and </.> tags. If you enclose something inside these tags then it will be translated into a link to that h2g2 page. For example, <./>PeerReview</.> would link to Peer Review, <./>Feedback</.> to the Feedback Forum, and so on. You can find a list of available names here.

• Finally, if you type in a link to an external website (ie one that starts with http://) then it will be translated into a link automatically.

If you are writing a Guide Entry (rather than a Posting) and want to include effects like bold, italic, headings and so on, then we recommend you write your entry in GuideML - see here for more details.