[ARCHIVED] Line breaks in gradebook comments

[ben_helweg]

Is it possible to have line breaks etc when writing comments in the gradebook?

I'm currently grading my students and inserting a comment after I give them a numerical grade and it's quite frustrating that gradebook strips out any breaks or paragraphs I insert whilst typing.

Some of my comments can be quite lengthy, such as points for a student to improve upon in a piece so it would be very helpful to have basic formatting available for this.

An example of what I'm talking about is uploaded, where the text just babbles on one word after another.

[Stef_retired]

Hi,  @ben_helweg ‌, I just checked this out and was able to reproduce the behavior; that's definitely frustrating. Have you considered grading the assignments in Speedgrader? My testing indicates that the comments box in Speedgrader  honors the line breaks the user enters. 

[ben_helweg]

Thanks for the reply Stefanie.

I just had a look in speedgrader and indeed it does honour them, so I'm pleased to see that.

I suppose it could be confusing for some users if they're using the gradebook to enter data.
Originally I'd made an extra comment for the student saying "sorry about the wall of text!" which I've now removed.

Perhaps it can be looked into!

Thanks again.

[KyleBurke]

When I copy/paste text from a text editor into the SpeedGrader, it does not "honor" the line breaks.  I see the line breaks (both before and after submitting) but my students do not. 

[ben_reed]

it looks like speed grader preserves the breaks, but students still see a wall of text. is there a way to use html or markdown in the comments?

[ben_reed]

oh, i see. if the student looks at the comments for the assignment, they see a wall of text. but if they look at the assignment in the grade book, they see the comments in a readable format.

it's nice that they have a way of getting acceptably formatted comments, but it really should format correctly in both contexts.

ben

[SusanNiemeyer]

I think students see the comments as a "wall" of text when they click on Grades as well. Only instructors see the line breaks and formatting. 

[KyleBurke]

fortunately, there are two ways for students to get from the Grades screen to the feedback, and they display differently. To get to the nicely-formatted version:

* Either be a student or go into Student View

* Go to the Grades option, then scroll down through the table (if necessary) to find the row with the assignment in question.

* On the right hand side of the row there should be one (or more) icons. For me there are two: one with some talk bubbles next to another with a checked box. Click on the talk bubbles to reveal the (nicely-formatted) feedback, complete with line breaks.

I hope this helps!

[kmcgrath]

I was able to do this in speed grader in Firefox on a mac using cmd+option+enter, but using Chrome, I don't seem to be able to find any way to do it.  (This is odd because Chrome usually has more features in Canvas, and I swear it was there when I used Chrome before.)  Any suggestions?