Help, I must be very stupid. I can't figure out how to use the italics/bold/underlining options. Or how to use that quoting-from-someone-else's-work thing in a yellow box. And my uploaded story is missing any formatting I put on it, which looks a bit scrappy! What am I doing wrong, lads? (By the way, here in Ireland we refer to everyone as lads, regardless of gender. Unless you're from Dublin. Where I live).
Very grateful for any help...

Hi hibernian,

You have to sandwich the words you'd like italicised or whatever between the appropriate symbols as shown next to the comment box. Then when you click on 'submit' everything appears magically as you intended. eg. for bold text you need:

a small letter b contained in square brackets followed by the text you want to be bold followed by a forward slash and a small letter b both contained in square brackets. The forward slash has the effect of cancelling the bold type so that what follows is just normal.

For italics the same applies, but use an 'i'; to underline use a 'u'; and to quote use the word 'quote' in square brackets followed by the quote itself followed by (in square brackets) /quote.

Hope that makes sense!

<b>bold</>
<i>italics</i>
<quote>quotation</quote>

Substitute the angle brackets for square brackets, and away you go.

Cheers lads! Will try that out. How's this?

<Added>

Yay, it worked just like you said it would!