It would seem that the language selection for submitting new stories (in my control panel software) is broken.

The last two Portuguese stories, I set the language to that, and it reverts to and posts it as "English."

Sorry!

Don't ask me why it's doing that.

Also, it seems that I'm going to have to reinstall Office here for editing, as the "Find and Replace" feature won't work, even with copy/paste and font switching to something common.

Search key not found. Bullshit! It's right there in front of me! I copied it; where do you think that came from!?

I hate to harp on this, too, and I know we've not had that many stories coming in lately. BUT...

Readers, I don't have a lot of time to devote to editing. I've posted about this before, and I guess I'm going to have to do it again.

First off, if you gripe at me over formatting, you'll be ignored. It's that simple. The format system is what it is. It's not apt to change soon, if ever.

If you're getting upset or triggered by something like this:

"Hello, I'm here for my appointment", OR "What did she say?,"

when it should be:

"Hello, I'm here for my appointment,"

"What did she say?"

then you are more than welcome to fuck right off!

FIND AND REPLACE refuses to fix this automatically. My version won't alert me that it's a typo. I don't know why, and I am not taking the time to earn a PhD in computer science to figure out why. I don't have time to learn and code my own word processor, either, since no one out there makes a good one.

I'm not going to get rowdy about this. I'm not taking the time to fix it. ," or ", isn't that big of a deal. I'll point it out to the author, and move on.

Read it and enjoy it. If the comma being in the wrong spot bothers you, as the reader, that much, close the page and move on. It's not as if we're flooded with reading material of late. Be grateful for what we've got.

From an author's perspective, I can tell you, it's disappointing and overall, disheartening, to get a comment or email like this: "Thanks. On page 4, you capitalized 'He' and it should be lower case, 'he'."

I can only say to those who contacted me, I'm sorry you got something like that when you were expecting real feedback. However, I laugh at stuff like: "Worst story ever!" OR "You suck!" Yeah, I get those...

"On page 17, you have 'Ferd,' and his name is 'Fred'."

But that's not commenting. That's nitpicking.

Authors want to know what you thought of their work after you read it.

Also, a logged in author should be able to use the DEL feature on their comments. If you can't, send me the link, and I'll delete the comment you want removed. That's if you get a comment. Personally, I stopped checking years ago.

And while we're at it, Folks, I WILL NOT take the time to fix "chunks of text".

"Hello, how are you?" "I'm fine, how are you?" "Oh thanks for asking! I'm good." "That's good to know!" They then went into the house, and all hell broke loose. "Wow, that's amazing!" she said. "I know, right?" he replied. The dog then bit him. "Oh, shit!" "I know, she hates men," she said.

Or even worse, there is no she said or such to separate the dialogue!

Now imagine 5k+ words of that. One big chunk. I don't know what's going on in the story.

This is an ongoing problem with authors, and I don't know why, as all one has to do is pick up a book or magazine and look at how it's published.

When one is writing, I have to wonder, do some authors even comprehend what they're writing?

I appreciate all submissions. Really. But stuff like that gets rejected. It has to be.

And again, if you don't have anything nice to say to the writers, don't say anything at all! Please look up "constructive criticism" and apply that.