Forum tips & tricks: create a good post

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1

To attract the best answers, make your post easy to read and nice to look at.
Follow these points to make it easier to help you and more likely you’ll get a prompt, useful answer.

  1. Choose a descriptive title that captures the key part of your question, eg “plots with multiple axes” instead of something generic like “help me with plotting”. Make use of tags and categories (you can edit those and the title after posting). These will make it more likely that your question will be seen by the people who can potentially help.

  2. Post quoted code by enclosing code blocks in triple-backticks, ```:

    ```
gmt coast [....]
gmt plot [....]
```

    Don’t post your code as a screenshot; it is difficult to read and impossible to copy-paste. Enclose inline commands with a single backtick, `.

  3. Indent your code to reflect its structure (your editor should help you with this). Indented code is easier to understand and troubleshoot.

  4. Do your best to make your example self-contained (“minimal working example”, MWE), so that it runs (or gets to the error that you want help with) as is. This means including data that the code operates on. If your data is large or proprietary, generate example data if possible and include that.

  5. Simplify your code to the smallest piece of code that still shows your problem. This step takes the most effort but is the most important for fixing your problem. Short, simple examples tend to get answers quickly.

  6. Make bold text by enclosing in ** (^b)

    • e.g. **bold text**

  7. Make italics by enclosing in * (^i)

    • e g. Italics are *sloping letters*

  8. Make a link with [text](url) (^k)

    • e.g. [gmt palace](https://www.gmtpalace.org)

  9. Make a blockquote with > on a new line (^+shift+9)

    • e.g. > Blockquote

    Blockquote

  10. Make lists by using * (bulleted, ^+shift+8) or n. (numbered, ^+shift+7)

  • e.g.
  • this is
  • a list
    • and
    • may be
      • nested
      • like this
  1. this
    • is
    • also
  2. also
  3. a list
    • nested
    • as well
* this is
* a list
  * and
  * may be
    * nested
    * like this

1. this
   * is
   * also
2. also
3. a list
   * nested
   * as well

Also see:

4 Likes
2

Andreas, the first 3-4 points of Please read: make it easier to help you - Meta Discussion - JuliaLang could be adopted by us as well.

1 Like
3

Agreed. Those are very good points. I’ll bake them in somehow.

5

Not able to edit my original post, so:

  • Make strikethrough by enclosing in ~~

    • e.g. ~~strikethrough~~