I’m sure you many times have replied to a comment someone has made on a posting on Facebook. But the well formed and well placed comment that you are so satisfied with suddenly becomes a small nightmare. You are constant bothered by notifications when people comment on the original posting.

Well, I got news for you. Because you have most likely done the same thing. And by that I mean you have probably replied to a comment in the wrong way more than once.

This is how you comment on postings on Facebook.

Here we have a posting on Facebook, with comments:

This is the point where a lot of people get this wrong. If you want to comment on the original posting, you do it like this:

Now everybody who has commented on the original posting will get a notification that I’ve posted a new comment. And that’s how Facebook works.

However, very often people are not replying to the original posting. Instead, they are replying to one of the comments. And that’s where things go wrong.

Do not type your reply as a new comment like this:

What will happen? Well, everybody who has commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And everybody will be confused about who you are replying to.

Some of you try to remedy that by tagging the person who made the comment you’re replying to. Like this:

Do not do this. Everybody who have commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And that is not what you are doing. You are replying to one specific comment. In addition, the person you tagged will get two notifications. One telling him that he has been tagged, and another telling him that someone has replied to the original posting.

So how do you reply to a comment, instead of the original posting? Simple. You click Reply under the comment:

Now, type your reply in this comment field instead:

Hit Enter, or the Post button your Facebook app, and your reply will now be directly beneath that comment:

Now, only the person who wrote that particular comment will be notified, and not everybody else who have written comments on the original posting. This is also a way to get a discussion thread going.

If someone now wants to reply to your reply, they click on Reply beneath your reply:

Their reply now will be displayed just beneath yours.

What happens when others make a reply to the original comment? It will be listed under the comment, beneath your reply. And here’s the nice part: Only you and any others who have replied to the comment will be notified about it!

This means that those who made their own comments on the original posting will not be notified. This makes Facebook cleaner and much more enjoyable for everyone. Here’s what a nice discussion should look like on Facebook:

As you can see someone commented on my posting, I then replied to that comment, and then 6 other people replied to that reply. Notice the grey line to the left that tells you that all these replies belong to the original comment. And at the bottom of the picture, you have two new comments. But those are comments to the original posting, which is not a part of the discussion thread belonging to the first comment.

So now you now you know how to reply and comment on Facebook!