Here's a quick guide for anyone who doesn't know how to do the HTML stuff on LJ. You can do most HTML-related stuff on LJ, but LJ does block a few tags.

LINKS AND PICTURES

LJ Link: <lj user="USERNAME">. That's it. No end tags.

LJ Cut: <lj-cut text="TEXT GOES HERE">too long; dont read</lj-cut>

Regular Link: <a href="LINK GOES HERE">TEXT GOES HERE</a>

Image: <img src="LINK TO PICTURE GOES HERE">

Link + Picture: <a href="LINK GOES HERE"><img src="PICTURE" border="0"></a>

COOL SYMBOLS

Or character entities, as they're normally called. This is a list of symbols you commonly see on LJ profiles and such; for a more complete list, go here. Or, if you can copy/paste a symbol, dig up the code here.

♥ : &hearts; or &#9829;

★(star) : &#9733;

☆(hollow star) : &#9734;

♩, ♪, ♫, ♬(music notes): &#9833;(quarter), &#9834;(eighth), &#9835;(single bar), &#9836;(double bar)

☝(i fapped to this): &#9757;

→ : &#8594; or &rarr;

← : &#8592; or &larr;

Blank comment(space) : &nbsp;

ಠ_ಠ (picardface/I see what you did there:) &#3232; for each "eye"

PRETTY TEXT

Size: <font size=-4>This is small text.</font> <small>You can achieve the same look by placing <small> tags in place of the font tags.</small>

<font size="2">This is normal text.</font>

<font size="4">This is big text.</font>

<font size="10">This is really big text, and is capable of breaking f-lists if not placed under a cut. For some reason, on LJ you can't go bigger than this if you have IE.</font>

<font size="20">This is really farking big text. Unlike in IE, which can't go higher than 8-10, other browsers such as Firefox or Opera seem to display it just fine.</font>

Or, you can just stack a bunch of <big> tags. -Axel

Bold, Italic, Underlined, and Strike-through: <b>This is bold text!</b> <i>Here's some italics.</i> <u>And now for some underused underline text!</u> <s>You can't read me!</s>

Colors: <font color="#ff0000">Red text! Hurts your eyes, huh?</font> If the hex is a little hard to remember, you can type in the color name instead and it'll do the same thing. Here's a link that lists some of the color names, and all of the web-safe colors you can use.

Sparkles: <span style="background: url(http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i239/em6455/sparkle.gif)">I sparkle at j00</span> (please upload the gif to your own photobucket account)

Also, this site helps a lot.