how do you make the drop down hide method of masking spoilers so as not to ruin things for others? sorry i'm new on the forums

Use the following tags

[ spoiler ]
[ /spoiler ]

before and after the stuff you want to hide. Just without the spaces in between the brackets and the rest of the text.

[spoiler]If you reply to a post you should be able to see the tags they used. [/spoiler]

ok thank you both very much for help me with this