I will mention that it can be desirable to make a link to a particular reply in a particular thread, and you can get the URL you want by simply going to the reply and clicking on the number, which clearly is shown as a link. Thats simple, but any other way of trying to construct that number leads to grief, in my experience.
I use a Mac, and for many years I had no trouble making hypertext links, then about three years ago or so, I began experiencing a peculiar problem: HTML parser finds the <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com instruction just fine - but the second which is there to terminate the URL doesnt get detected. With the result that the link, and anything after it, doesnt appear in preview. For whatever reason, deleting and retyping then works, and I can proceed from there.
So its just a nuisance, but Im curious why the gets displayed but not detected by HTML.
I had a similar experience at work back in the day, when an * was required and was displayed as being there - but wasnt detected. All I did was delete and retype the *, and the program worked. Spooky.
Me too, especially useful is the one I didn't know about: <pre>.
I have the exact same trailing quote issue at Hot Gas..