Slammr (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:34 pm Perhaps I have to submit the stories differently. I've just copied from my webpages. What should I use instead, plain text?

The codes for bold are a b in square parentheses to start, and the same at the end of the bold preceded by a forward slash /

Underscore is a u

Italic is an i

example:

bold =

underscore =

italic =

Having just completed an review of the literary inventory Colin's so generously and graciously submited for us, this Archive tops them all, hand down, in my opinion. I wouldn't change anything -- why fight success.

Bagoas (imported) wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2006 8:07 am It doesn't really matter to me whether paragraphs are separated or not, as long as they are not widely separated, i.e., by more than one line.

I have been putting two blank lines between paragraphs when several days have elapsed between the paragraphs. Is this a good idea?

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BossTamsin (imported) wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2006 2:12 am Part of the problem lies in the fact that while the old system did work, there were some issues (I feel) in regards to how the HTML of the stories was output. One of the things I am aiming for is for the stories to be parsed in fully-compliant (or near-compliant) XHTML. This is proving to be a larger challenge than I had anticipated.

I should note that while the formatting was not what is traditional for fiction (no spaces between paragraphs, first line of a paragraph indented), to date I have not seen any stories that were center-justified. That is something that would most definitely be corrected prior to the story being released to the general public.

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Alas, I have seen several stories that I gave up on reading due to them being center-justified. This may have all been before the current incarnation of this system, however. Sometimes I can get normal justification back by turning off my user CSS overrides (and also losing my prefered color scheme, which I find easier on my eyes than the choices of most sites) but today I ran into a nasty surprise. I have a story that I hope to submit in the next few days and I got curious about paragraph formatting.

Once upon a time there was a (too often ignored) guide for authors that listed a few DOs and DON'Ts and useful coding bits. These include codes for paragraph formatting. Having read, or having tried to read, stories with no paragraph breaks I considered this rather important. Today I put some sample text in the system and used the PREVIEW option. The result was center-justified text, no matter my CSS settings.

While I am certainly not a prolific writer, I would like what I write to have a normal, proper formatting and do not wish to inflict too much work upon others to get it that way.

Am I missing something? Is that guide still around someplace? Or is there indeed any guide so I can make formatting easier for all involved by writing it "that way" in the first place? I'm not asking to determine text size, or typeface, or color, but how to best do paragraph formatting and correct justification. Effects such as italic and bold can be useful in moderation, but I can get by without them if need be, However, I really want to be sure I won't be committing a center-justified mess that someone will have to clean up - or throw away.

For some reason the preview option shows it center justified, but the final copy usually isn't. You can't go by the preview or how it shows it after you submit the story. I panicked, too, the first time I saw it, but my story, once posted was left justified. I did have a story I recently submitted end up center justified with spaces between each line, but I had submitted the whole thing as html, which I won't do again.