LINKS
Some simple HTML for links is:
<a href="website.com">TEXT</a>
that is a quick and dirty way of providing a link to a website.
Linking to a specific comment is achieved in the following manner:
Move your mouse over the section highlighted in the above photo, and right click to Copy Link Address. Then the procedure become the same as in the 1st example, add the link adress and the text you want highlighted, for example:
<a href="http://scrutinyhooligans.us/2010/10/06/350-ways-to-sunday/#comment-45290">the comment is here</a>.
EXCERPTING
If you want to lift a portion of text, copy and paste a portion only, not the whole thing...unless it is your comment. Not only is it considered bad manners to lift a large portion of someone else's work and post it somewhere else on the Internet, it is plagiarism [Joe Biden knows about plagiarism] and violates the original author's copyright. [read this introduction to copyright law].
My suggestion is that you quote a small portion of the text, and provide a link to the original, complete text at the end. For example:
The "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works without the permission of the author. That's vital so that copyright law doesn't block your freedom to express your own works -- only the ability to appropriate other people's. Intent, and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to criticise the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to register at the New York Times web site? The first is probably fair use, the others probably aren't.
Fair use is generally a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use much more of the work than is needed to make the commentary.) It should not harm the commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is a problem.) Famously, copying just 300 words from Gerald Ford's 200,000 word memoir for a magazine article was ruled as not fair use, in spite of it being very newsworthy, because it was the most important 300 words -- why he pardoned Nixon.
Note that most inclusion of text in followups and replies is for commentary, and it doesn't damage the commercial value of the original posting (if it has any) and as such it is almost surely fair use. Fair use isn't an exact doctrine, though. The court decides if the right to comment overrides the copyright on an individual basis in each case. There have been cases that go beyond the bounds of what I say above, but in general they don't apply to the typical net misclaim of fair use.
Source: 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained
The previous example is right on the borderline of what is appropriate for excerpting. Less is best. You can also use the bold and italic HTML tags to highlight the text you are excerpting. Just use <b> and/or <i> at the beginning of the excerpted text, and </b> and/or </i> at the end. HTML tags should also be nested when using them. If you use the <b> tag then the <i> tag, then you should use them in reverse order at the end or your excerpted text, with the </i> then the </b> to close out the text decoration.
You can still just copy and paste links if you want, but they aren't guaranteed to work unless you dress them in some HTML.
