At the risk of asking a question that as been asked and answered before, is there any way of using italics in the text of a question.

I have included the name of a newspaper in a question and would have liked to use a generally recognised convention of putting the title in italics: The Independent but did not know how to, or even if it is permissible..

I've seen it done in quizzes before, but I've been curious about this myself. I've only ever put titles in quotation marks.

The short answer is, unfortunately, no. The reason that media titles are put in quotation marks is because it is not possible to put them in italics.

That's kind of what I thought, but it still makes this English teacher cringe every time I have to put quotation marks around the title of a full length work!

Years ago it was permitted to have bold, colored, and italicized text in quizzes. It was done away with, though.

You still see some from time to time, especially in the Wordwise section of the site. They were written years ago.


Snowman, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't the reason it was done away with because of people abusing the bold feature for extra emphasis where it wasn't needed?

It's my understanding that it was done away with to prevent "sneaky hacking things" (aka "computer voodoo"). Much simpler, much safer, just to disallow HTML in quizzes altogether.

Simple question LadyC; how come it is possible on here?

"people abusing the bold feature for extra emphasis where it wasn't needed?"

Now I can really see a lot of editors allowing that!!!!

This forum uses proprietary software, darksplash, and the code that enables emboldening, italics, etc, is part of the software. In addition, the forum isn't putting data into a database which the quiz templates do - and there's often an issue when users can de facto use code which gets stored in databases and affects the way the site works across different functions (e.g. quizzes and games). Some users are naughty and use HTML to input stuff which causes problems for the site concerned - so it's better not to allow it at all. On top of which some people have no taste at all and would use red differently-sized capital letters in italics and bold with underlining all over the place.

Even if there were not security issues (which there are), allowing the use of such HTML features would just be one more thing to correct in the many first-time templates submitted that already have masses of exclamation marks, all-capitalised sentences, etc. to let the world know how excited the new author is at getting a chance to write a quiz. And, just as I have now spent 5 minutes of my working time playing around with what I can do in this reply screen, a lot of authors might find themselves distracted from the matter at hand, which is to actually write something interesting in their quiz.

HTML? We don't need no stinking HTML!!!!!

GGGGGGG....!
G...............!
G...............!
G...............!
G.....GGGG...!
G.........G....!
G.........G....
GGGGGGG....!

I like HTML (a LOT). I've built several websites. I think that, used judiciously, it has the potential of making a VERY (visually) interesting quiz (since photo quizzes are not allowed for the general public yet).

(caveat: as Looney noted, it certainly shouldn't rely solely on that attribute alone!).

I will admit to trying to use italics in one of my quizzes (mostly because I didn't bother to read all the rules - yeah, I know it's a no-brainer - what can I say other than guilty? lol).

After it was rejected, I promptly promised to NEVER attempt to do so again LOL.

It's really too bad that there are people out there (i.e. hackers) who just like to ruin things. Chat boards generally don't pose any danger whatsoever from folks like that, but I can see where it "might" be a concern for actual quizzes if there are particularly deranged/unhappy/axe-to-grind types about.

In any case, for now, there are other ways to get your point across. At last count there were over one million words in the OED (including scientific ones).