I was not sure how to quote a specific posting before making a response, so I could not find a tool button to make the quotation happen and so I clicked on the "permalink" word but nothing appeared to happen except a slight delay and a "reply" field opened.
So now, I do not know what the result of the Permalink is or does, and I do not know if there is some way to undo the clicking of Permalink.
I managed to make a quotation using another tool button, the one with the mouseover caption of "Quote Thread", which allows for copy-and-paste.