Avoiding bold font in Homework Questions

[andrewkirk]

I've noticed that homework questions occasionally appear with part 3 - the attempt - in bold font, like in this post. People complain about that from time to time, saying please don't write in all bold.

I think I've worked out how it happens. My theory is that it's because the heading of section 3 in the template - like the other headings - is in bold, and is not followed by any non-bold text. If the poster starts typing on the same line as the title, their text will automatically be bold. If they subsequently decide to split the line after the title, the text they typed will remain bold.

A way to stop this inadvertently happening in most cases (and I think it is nearly always inadvertent) would be to change the homework template so that it includes a non-bolded character, say a colon or a full stop, after each heading. If the poster starts typing after that, their text will be non-bold.

A non-bold space could be put there instead of a printed character. But then posters may start typing with the cursor before the space, in which case their text will be bold. I think they'd be less likely to start typing with the cursor before a punctuation mark.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

There is a non bold space below #3. It seems members don't see this and try to create a space by clicking return while at the end of #3 which preserves the bold.

 

[mfb]

We can add a short text that members can overwrite. Can be as short as "...", but "don't forget this part" would work as well.