# How do I put those yellow boxes in my question?

Whenever I post a question, $$5$$ minutes later someone edits a yellow box around the part of the question that couldn’t fit in the title. I wish to save those nice souls their time and learn to do it myself. I couldn’t find the proper code, so I decided to ask it here:

How do I put those yellow boxes in my question?

Thanks!

• Your modus operandi seems to be to try to fit an entire question into the title. A title is meant to be a title and to give some idea of the question, not to give as much of the question as will fit. What's more, the body of the question should stand on its own, that is, it should be possible to understand the question without ever seeing the title. – Gerry Myerson Sep 4 '19 at 13:27
• But sometimes it just doesn’t fit. All I wanna know is how to add the yellow boxes. – Aditya Sep 4 '19 at 13:42
• If it doesn't fit, change it so it fits. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I've never seen any yellow boxes, and don't know why anybody would want to add one. – Gerry Myerson Sep 4 '19 at 13:46
• Just put ">" before a paragraph and it becomes yellow. On meta it's gray instead of yellow. Also you can click on the edit button to see any modification that was done to a post. – Zacky Sep 4 '19 at 13:55
• @GerryMyerson I see those yellow boxes constantly. And like 10 mins ago, someone edited my question to add them in again. – Aditya Sep 4 '19 at 13:58
• The OP probably means blockquote as suggested by Zacky. There is a section on blockquote in the editing help. – Martin Sleziak Sep 4 '19 at 14:37
• $\color{yellow}{\blacksquare}$ – user645636 Sep 5 '19 at 14:53
• When someone does interesting formatting in a post that I want to learn about, I hit the edit button on the post and check their raw "code". Just be sure to cancel out of the edit instead of posting it! – Matthew Daly Sep 7 '19 at 14:21

They are intended to signal that a passage of text is a quote, or a part of the text that is somewhat detached from the rest. Some users also use it purely for emphasis but this is a bit discouraged.

Anyway, to get such a box type a > at the start of the line.

>This is some text in a "yellow box"

Gives

This is some text in a "yellow box"

The color is different on meta; but it is that same command.

I hope that's what you wanted to know. More information on formatting is in the help center https://math.stackexchange.com/help/formatting

• Is there a similar alternative to emphasis something if this is discouraged? – Zacky Sep 4 '19 at 15:05
• Yes. Yes. Yes. :-) Source: *Yes.* **Yes.** ***Yes.***` Typing --- gives a line, which can alos be used to set apart a part. – quid Sep 4 '19 at 16:01
• THE CAPS LOCK KEY IS ANOTHER ALTERNATIVE (but this is hugely discouraged). – Gerry Myerson Sep 4 '19 at 22:43
• The thing is is that so many people edit in blockquotes to others questions and use blockquotes to isolate their question that I think there is an impression that this use is actually encouraged/standard rather than discouraged. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the "blockquestion" is more common than blockquotes on this site. – Paul Plummer Sep 5 '19 at 3:40
• Since some comments mentioned using blockquote for emphasis, it might be useful to add links to previous discussions about this: Stop misuse of Markdown blockquotes for emphasis and Is using blockquote for highlighting problematic? – Martin Sleziak Sep 5 '19 at 5:02
• bullets or colored squares work just as good. – user645636 Sep 5 '19 at 15:29
• you can Probably use the CSS backgroundcolor property to change it. – user645636 Sep 12 '19 at 13:11
• probably because if we don't emphasize it some how we get downvoted or asked what the question is. I'd use bold for headers not just emphasis. italics is meant for in sentence use, not a header type. I'll just have to make my headers calligraphy then ... – user645636 Sep 16 '19 at 12:30
• Why exactly is this discouraged, what is this 'orange box' then used for? I thought it is to divide between question and own work, to make a question/answer more readable. I use it all the time, to make my questions/answers more readable. – Cornman Oct 13 '19 at 14:40
• @Cornman it is discouraged because it is semantically incorrect and there is no way of knowing how this will be rendered down the road. The environment is called "blockquote", it thus is for quoting something. It can make sense to use it in that context, for example when an exercises is quoted or the situation is equivalent to this, but to use it purely for emphasis is discouraged. – quid Oct 13 '19 at 17:27

Perhaps the "Yellow boxes" mentioned are as shown here:

This yellow box is placed around a question in the listing if one of the tags is in my "favorite tags" list.

• It seems that the OP was referring to this edit – Arctic Char Sep 5 '19 at 16:23