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>Greentext is text following a greater than sign turned green to separate it from the body of the reply, meant as a quote function

The greater-than symbol (>) at the beginning of a line has been in use as a quote symbol for a very, very long time in various text based forms of communication; e-mail, for example. It's used this way to align the body of the quote slightly off with the body of the reply in the place of indentation.

Given the simple nature of 2ch style imageboards, the greater-than sign method of quoting text was preferred over using quote tables like with a modern message board. To further separate the text being quoted from the reply text, the text color is turned green.

Any text following a greater-than sign may be referred to as greentext regardless of the actual color. The practice of using the symbol to denote a quote has become commonplace for channers in places it wasn't before, such as IRC and message boards that already have a dedicated quote function (making the practice entirely unnecessary).

Common usage

Greentext has taken on roles for which it was not originally intended.

"Implying", for example, is a riff off of FTFY, wherein the poster changes the text of a previous post in a quote, in this case to suggest the poster was laying down implications as if they were false.

Greentext stories are accounts written entirely in greentext; a greentext story literally "quotes" something that has happened the way a regular story does, but as if someone is describing each individual action, often making use of line breaks.

Example sentences

>Wake up
>It's storming out
>Thunder flashes
>See bug eyed man staring through window
>Wet self, hide under covers

Images

Related Pages

/r9k/

/v/

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