You may find yourself wishing, in the midst of a conversation with a number of participants, wanting to respond to everyone in one reply. [I often do this.] Here's a good practice on how to do it with SMF:
1. Go to Profile. Select Look and Layout Preferences. Scroll down and look for the option box next to "Use quick reply on topic display:" I have the option set to "show, on by default".
2. When replying to a number of people, find the first post you want to reply to, and hit the "quote" button at the top-right of that posts's area. Javascript will force a window to pop up briefly, and it will say, "Retrieving quote..." When it disappears, you'll be transported to the bottom of the page, where the quick reply box has the full text of the post quoted for you, along with metadata[1] about the post [who wrote it, when, what the ID# is, etc.]
For an example, let me quote a random post on the Random Board:
I am a fan of lawyers... a lot of the time you can get the bar association discount on points and fines. about seven or eight years ago I was busted doing 100 in a 55 (i was late for work) and given a 5 point, $550 ticket. my lawyer got it down to 1 point, and $100, plus $150 for him and i was still ahead of the game. out of all the times I have gone to traffic court, I always did much better with the lawyer.
and just for the record, I no longer drive like a maniac (mostly because I now live in new jersey, and that is normal here)
If you click one the "Quote from: snoop on ..." you'll be transported to that post ...
no matter whether it's in the same thread or another one. This is a great future: when topics are split and moved around, these links stay in place! This helps people follow things.
Anyhow, outside the last /quote tag, you'll be able to type your reply to that person.
Here's where the fun begins: to quote another person, select all the text in the quick reply box. [Ctrl-A does this on a PC; Cmd-A does it on a Mac.] This ensure that you lose nothing. Then, hit the down arrow on your keyboard; this will end the Select All option, and the text will go from a blue background to a white one. Hit return and you'll be ready to quote someone else. Scroll to the next post you want to quote, then hit quote ... the window pops up again, and the text is inserted where your cursor is.
Repeat as necessary. If you're replying to posts on multiple pages, this is why you've copied stuff to the clipboard; you can paste that into the quick-reply box before you start quoting new posts.
...
Proper quote attribution is a very good thing, as it helps those who may just be casually following the discussion. We all know that this place can move pretty fast ... take a moment longer and help out your fellow poster, and they'll be more likely to give you a response. [After all, we know you spent a bunch of time on that long post! It would be a shame for no one to respond.]
GFM
[1] Data about data.
