Writing on PF: Exploring the [B] Phenomenon

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AI Thread Summary
Users are experiencing an issue where typing "B" inside square brackets results in a lowercase "b" instead of the expected uppercase "B" on a specific forum. This problem does not occur with other letters like "A," "C," or "X," leading to confusion among users. Various workarounds have been suggested, including using different container symbols or enclosing the text in itex tags to prevent automatic formatting. The phenomenon is deemed uninteresting yet potentially frustrating for users, prompting calls for a fix. Overall, the discussion highlights a technical glitch affecting text formatting on the site.
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On this site and no other, when I type B inside [] I get .

I copied that from a thread where I wrote the above sentence.

Now let me write that sentence, well just the

Yes I wrote B capital and got b. If you press the quote and it comes out like on my screen you will see I am not fantasizing.

But not in the title. And not outside the []. This does not happen with [A]. Let me write a few more [C][D][M][X][Y][Z]. OK, it does not happen for X, Y, Z, so we can survive. But - yes it is still happening.

This phenomenon is very uninteresting. However it could drive some of the people who come here crazy.* Unless it happens only to me.* Otherwise I think something needs to be done.

*I am not crazy.**

**However if you are seeing different on your screen than I on mine, I might sound crazy.
I type B and if it is in square brackets I get b.
And I can't get round it by typing b in brackets - I get - i.e. b inside [].
 
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epenguin said:
On this site and no other, when I type B inside [] I get .

I copied that from a thread where I wrote the above sentence.

Now let me write that sentence, well just the

Yes I wrote B capital and got b. If you press the quote and it comes out like on my screen you will see I am not fantasizing.

But not in the title. And not outside the []. This does not happen with [A]. Let me write a few more [C][D][M][X][Y][Z]. OK, it does not happen for X, Y, Z, so we can survive. But - yes it is still happening.

This phenomenon is very uninteresting. However it could drive some of the people who come here crazy.* Unless it happens only to me.* Otherwise I think something needs to be done.

*I am not crazy.**

**However if you are seeing different on your screen than I on mine, I might sound crazy.
I type B and if it is in square brackets I get b.
And I can't get round it by typing b in brackets - I get - i.e. b inside [].
Perhaps because is the first part of bolding?
 


In the following tests, the . in the brackets are there just as dummies:

[.b]bold[/b] = bold
[.B]bold[/B] = bold
[.B]bold[/b] = bold
[.bold]bold[/bold] = [bold]bold[/bold]

[.b] =
[.B] =

That this happens to me, too, says nothing about your sanity or lack thereof.
 


Wow, seems there's no way around this actually.

You'd think putting the "noparse" tags ([noparse][noparse][/noparse][/noparse]) around it should work, but even then, it still changes the thing to lowercase. That's a bug.

Example:
[noparse]The 'B's here were written in uppercase[/noparse]
 


I don't see a problem with this. If you want to differentiate a "B" from a "b", use a different container such as the "" that I used here. Otherwise, you are going to invoke the bold function. There are a lot of container symbols available that don't trigger an automatic function: <>, (), ··, ”’, etc..

edit: Mentors—how the hell did we end up with another penguin here? I thought that we were still trying to assassinate the first one.
 
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Some workarounds:

1. -> enclose in itex tags

2. [noparse][[/noparse]B] -> use noparse around some part of the 3-character string, not the entire thing

3. [B] -> other types of goofy tricks, this being a quick one - hit "quote" to see what I've done.

Note: Enclosing within code tags does not help.
 
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epenguin said:
Danger what you say is all very well but [A] is supposed to represent the molarity of A.

I wasn't aware of that. Sorry. Good solutions, Gokul.
 
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Gokul43201 said:
Some workarounds:

1. -> enclose in itex tags

2. [noparse][[/noparse]B] -> use noparse around some part of the 3-character string, not the entire thing

3. [B] -> other types of goofy tricks, this being a quick one - hit "quote" to see what I've done.

Note: Enclosing within code tags does not help.
Thank you. :smile: The first seems the one I am most likely to remember.
 
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