I have to say that the reply system on threads is not good. In fact I would say terrible.
I see lots of posts from people who have just used the reply button and I have no idea what the original comment was that was being responded to without scrolling up the thread! Using quotes works a lot better in my view.
I agree. Many times Iāve hit the big orange Reply button when I meant to reply to an individual poster.
Hmmmā¦ Iām not so sure itās bad design 
You can hit reply to a particular comment if you like (although there have been some problems noted with that), or you can reply with the big button to the thread in general. If you want to be specific, you can also use quotes, or tag individuals.
With any new thread, most of the comments refer to the original post. Even if you donāt indicate youāre replying to a particular comment, it is often clear what folk are referring to.
Reducing choice is unlikely to make it any clearer in my view.
Iād say itās more human error or laziness than a reply button issue.
You can still quote but to do you you need to highlight the text you wish to cite which will provide you with a prompt to quote it in a reply, like this.
Stuart if you click the right facing arrow next to the profile pic of the person being replied to, it opens up their post (so you can see what the reply was to). Simples.
After āarrowā clicked,
That doesnāt help when youāre far down in a thread, and thereās a post thatās clearly a reply to someone, but you canāt tell who or what itās a reply to. For example, this post is a reply to the one above it, but thereās nothing in my reply to indicate that.
Like I said in my earlier post.
There are a multitude of ways to make it clear who or what you are replying to. But unfortunately weāre dealing with people and some will always take the easy way out.
The positive side of the advice about what is there is perfectly functional if people choose to use the tools I agree with. No change to the forum is needed nor planned in that regard.
I can post a general reply to no-one, just adding a comment to the overall topic, by clicking the orange REPLY button at the very bottom of the topic.
This really is non specific and can be unhelpful when a post is meant to be directly replying to someone elseās post.
I can post a direct reply to the original post by clicking the grey Reply button bottom right of the screenshot.
I can view the replies already posted by clicking the drop down arrow - bottom left of screenshot. (2 at the time of posting)
I can quote some or all of the original post by highlighting the desired text and clicking the Quote button or pressing the letter q on my keyboard.
I can tag the original poster by typing @ before their user name.
@markr31
The reason there is nothing in your reply to indicate is that you chose not to make use of any of the available tools and functionality.
Then that has changed, because in the past when Iāve highlighted the whole post and clicked āquoteā, it gave me a message that I couldnāt do that. Only on partial quotes.
Why would you want to quote a whole post? The Idea of a quote is to pull out the portion of the post that you want to reply to.
The Grey Reply button is to be used if you want the whole post.
YES! If youāre going to quote someone, please donāt be lazy and quote their entire post. Delete the text that isnāt relevant and just leave the words you are addressing. Like I just did. 
It might be a one-sentence post that canāt be edited down any further and still make sense.
IIRC, It used to be that if you clicked the āreplyā under a specific post (rather than the general button at the bottom of the thread), in the upper-right corner of your reply there would be a curved arrow next to a little icon of the person you were responding to, that could be clicked on to go back and read that post. Itās not there anymore.
Jeez, never mind. Iām sorry I got involved in this discussion.
I understand that. What I canāt figure out ( and was the point of my question) is how you see the original text that was replied to someone uses the " reply to a particular comment" button.
Note that I have not read all response so I may get my answer below 
OK. Didnāt know that. From there how do I go back to the position I was in the thread before I clicked the arrow?
Exactly!!
This is not about me replying but being able to see the original comment once they have replied. See my post above.
I understand that but thatās not my question.
Thatās what I was referring to in my last post. On my screen, that right-facing arrow and icon pic is no longer there on replies.
Because you can see what the comment was that was responded to.
My question, probably not very well asked, was about navigation.
From what I have learnt I can click the arrow to see the post that was responded to but then what do I click to get back to the position I was in the thread so I can carry on reading the next comment?
Replied using the gray āReplyā button. This works in Chrome, but does not work (for me on MacbookPro) using Firefox or Safari.
