# How to cut and paste

It has happened a few times that I have wanted to move someone else's answer from the comments to an answer, when the poster implicitly does not wish to do so (by not responding after a days-old request) or explicitly declines to do so. Of course, I think that the proper thing to do in such cases is to wait a decent interval and mark the post community wiki. Anyway, this is not my question.

It is tough to cut and paste a heavily marked up comment, and I usually wind up simply manually re-typing it. I know that I can right click on an individual MathJax object and see the code that produced it, but is there any way to see, or otherwise to C&P, the source for an entire comment?

I am not sure if I am asking for support with an existing feature, or a feature request for a missing but surely useful feature, so I put both tags.

• Some suggestions can be found here: How to copy mixture of text and latex formulas in a comment? (Mathematics Meta) From the possibilities listed there, the bookmarklet is really quick. However, it only works for comments under a question (not for comments under an answer). Maybe also other posts linked there might be useful. – Martin Sleziak Mar 26 '18 at 19:23
• It might be also worth checking Meta Stack Exchange: Is there a way to view a comment's source? (And maybe also the linked questions.) – Martin Sleziak Mar 26 '18 at 19:26
• @MartinSleziak, thanks! It sure seems like my question is a duplicate of your first linked one. Do you agree? – LSpice Mar 26 '18 at 19:31
• Well, except we do not have cross-site duplicates - it's not on Meta Mathoverflow. – Martin Sleziak Mar 26 '18 at 19:32
• You should retype it and, in fact, rewrite it. Copy and paste of a comment usually does not make a good answer (even if it can give the gist of the main idea). – Emil Jeřábek Mar 26 '18 at 20:40
• @EmilJeřábek, I can buy that this is generally true, but the specific example that motivated it was this post copied nearly literatim from comments by alpoge, which is, I think, a counterexample. – LSpice Mar 26 '18 at 21:15
• All right, there are surely exceptions, but the question is if they are frequent enough to warrant a special software support. – Emil Jeřábek Mar 27 '18 at 13:29

There are certainly legitimate reasons when it is useful to copy text of a comment. As Emil Jeřábek said, it is not clear whether they are frequent enough to be integrated in Stack Exchange software.

All right, there are surely exceptions, but the question is if they are frequent enough to warrant a special software support. -- Emil Jeřábek

If you think that such feature can be useful you should probably upvote the feature request on Meta Stack Exchange: Is there a way to view a comment's source?

I will summarize some of the methods how to copy comments. There are certainly many possibilities how to do this, I'll mention the ones I have at least tried.

I will also refer to the answers here: Is there a way to view a comment's source? on Meta Stack Exchange and How to copy mixture of text and latex formulas in a comment? on Mathematics Meta.

Clearly, if the comment contains only plaintext, it can be copied directly from the browse. It is more problematic what to do if the comment also uses some MarkDown and MathJax. We can try whether various methods work on this comment which contains both.

There is a bookmarklet for this available among NormalHuman's Stackmarklets (Wayback Machine). In Google Chrome I had no problems with using it - all I needed to do was to drag the bookmarklet to the bookmark bar and then I was able to start using it.

The disadvantage is that in this way you can only copy the comments under the question. Also, it won't work if the question is closed, since the comment is copied into the answer box.

In this way I get:

In addition to [@PaulBroussous](https://mathoverflow.net/a/295954)'s nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ <i>has</i> no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$). -- [LSpice](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/295897/contragredient-of-a-cuspidal-representation#comment735801_295897)

In addition to @PaulBroussous's nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ has no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$). -- LSpice

You can also simply view the source of the page (Ctrl+U in Google Chrome) and view the text of the comment of the comment in this way. If there are many comments, you can use StackPrinter to see the version of the question with all comments displayed. Notice that you get things in HTML, while the bookmarklet mentioned above changes some of it to MarkDown.

In addition to <a href="https://mathoverflow.net/a/295954">@PaulBroussous</a>&#39;s nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ <i>has</i> no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$).

In addition to @PaulBroussous's nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ has no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$).

It is also possible to use this SEDE query with comment id or comment link. See this answer for more details.

In addition to [@PaulBroussous](https://mathoverflow.net/a/295954)'s nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ *has* no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$).

In addition to @PaulBroussous's nice answer, another easy way to make this false is if ($\pi$ is not self dual and) $G$ has no (non-trivial) characters, as happens, for example, for $G = \mathrm{SL}_2(F)$ (at least if $\mathrm{char}(F) \ne 2$).

Here both url and italics have been converted to MarkDown.

• Also, the iOS StackExchange app does not allow me to paste in comment fields at all. That seems worth fixing. – Matt F. Apr 4 '18 at 19:51
• @MattF. That seems only marginally related to the topic at hand. In any case, this thread seems to be about the problem you mentioned: iOS 11 - unable to paste into comments. – Martin Sleziak Apr 5 '18 at 3:49