After much thought and going over other archive sites and their multitudinous guidelines for posting, I would like Authors to be aware of the following guidelines for stories submitted for posting at the Eunuch Archive: Spelling and Grammar – Grammatical disasters will not be accepted. The story must be easily readable. Ask for help if you need it; it’s available. Paragraphs – Stories in one huge chunk of text will not be accepted. Oddly spaced material will not be accepted. Please see the link about formatting below and read it. http://www.eunuch.org/format.htm Punctuation – Not a biggie, but important. Quotes, etc., are important to readability. A sample dialogue will soon be posted for an example. Sample of quotes in dialogue: "I want to be a eunuch," he said. Note the comma, period, question mark, etc., is inside the end quote. Violence/Gore/Snuff – There’s a tag called WARNING when you post the story. Use it. If I get a rude surprise reading it, into the trash it goes. There’s also a box for a brief synopsis of the story. Use it. Untagged Snuff will immediately be trashed. Story Description Tags – Use them, that’s why they are there. Stories with NO tags at all will be trashed. I will edit erroneous tags. Sex/Gore/Off-topic Themes – EA hosts genital mutilation stories whether M/F/TG/etc. Sex stories with no such theme should be placed somewhere else like Nifty, etc. Someone has to lose something “down there” for it to qualify. Rampant murder/mutilation for the sake of shock will not be accepted, even if it does involve a genital mutilation. Plot Lines – Stories with no real plot that make no sense will be trashed. Dead characters don’t talk back. See #6. Multi-Part Stories – Two or three paragraphs don’t qualify as a “Part 1”. If it’s only 15k or so, add to it. See #7. Foreign Languages – These are fine, provided that I can get a translation. Your patience is expected and appreciated. Plagiarism – Don’t even try to use someone else’s story/characters without permission. If you want to revise an OLD story of your own, let me know. If you want to take off in someone else’s “world,” per say, get their permission and let me know. Last but Not Least – If your submission didn’t show up within two (2) days and I didn’t make a post about EA server errors, then it got rejected and no amount of whining is going to bring it back. Feel free to ask though, as sometimes things do just evaporate. Sometimes the EA404 Vulture gets hungry!These guidelines are not an effort to make anyone intentionally angry. They’re to serve a purpose. I am spending far too much time cleaning things up now, and it’s got to change. Older members may recall the days of the “once a month” updates in stories, and if B. got sick, you were sh*t-outta-luck. We don’t want to go back to that, hence these tips. –Paolo.

AHEM...

bump

:-\

Now that I've got your attention, here's the addendum.

Quotes. Quotations. Quote marks. Call them what you will. They're on the little key next to the big ENTER key. You hold down the SHIFT key, and there they are! They look like this:

"

"

"

"

"

See 'em? Note the ' symbol, that is the same key without the SHIFT held down.

I have been rather lax on quote marks lately, what with the above text on proper story layout for submissions to EA. Well, it's time to add another one. Sorry, but there have been reader complaints. And if you think this list is a real pain, you should try some of the other story archives out there. Talk about prim/proper editors!

So when you write dialouge, that is, people conversing in a story - you have to use quote marks. It makes it so much easier to read. A sample dialouge is as follows:

The lights were low. The naked man tied to the table was feeling very anxious. He was also very hard. And then, there she was.

"That's a really big knife you have there!" He gasped.

"Thank you," she replied, waving the razor-sharp blade at him, "Do you really like it?" She then winked.

"I do," he breathed.

"I'm going to put it to good use," she said dreamily, carefully testing the edge with her thumb.

"Please do," he sighed, closing his eyes. "I can't wait!"

Notice a pattern of quote marks there? And the punctuation? Thanks in advance.

I don't know what's going on lately with some of the story submissions, but I feel the need to inform the Board (or at least those who read the Boards) about it. What's been happening is this:

Stories are submitted and I find them in the holding tank. I read them. Upon reaching the end of the story, I find "conditions" listed. To get the rest of the story, or the rest of the alleged novel, one is supposed to email the Author and meet his conditions. In the last week alone, there have been three that have asked for more information than is safe to give out online, in my opinion.

I would hope that readers here have the good sense to NOT do such things, but you never know.

For example - "Please email me with your name, address, phone number and a picture if possible if you want to read the rest." There have also been other incarnations of this request.

This is totally unacceptable and stories with "demands" listed in the text will be deleted immediately. I am DONE sending email to such Authors. Besides, this is just about as close to as you can get without sending out the annoying emails! That, and the Archive is a free service; Members should not have to jump through someone else's hoops to get a story.

Feedback on stories has long been a problem at EA, and at other Archive sites as well. This is not new information. There's nothing wrong with putting in a line saying something like, "Please offer comments" or something like that. Everyone who posts a story would like to have a comment. At least one.

I would also like to remind everyone reading the Archive that not everyone that you meet online is a nice person. Sending out your personal information to someone you chat with online is a really dumb thing to do. Granted, if they're technologically inclined and have too much free time on their hands, they might be able to figure out who you are or where you're at by your IP number. However, providers (like AOL, Earthlink, whoever...) are supposed to protect that information.

This is why such stories are NOT going to be accepted. I'm sure that in some way, the Archive could be deemed responsible if someone sent their information to someone about a story with such demands in it, and something bad happened to that person who was gullible enough to do it.

By the way, did you know that the latest Webster paperback dictionary (check your local bookstore now) left out the word "gullible"?

There seems to be a line spacing problem lately with story submissions, and after testing and playing around, I have figured it out!

It is very, very common to see a story submitted with two lines, a break, two lines, a break, two lines, a break...on and on in perfect pattern.

What caused this?

The answer is very simple, now that I've duplicated it.

A story is pulled up on someone's screen from another site. The text is highlighted, copied, and pasted into our submission box and perhaps edited!

How original.

But now we know what the giveaway is. The spacing is the key. A typical copy/paste submission off of a WEB PAGE will yield this result every single time.

Just thought you should know this, and that double spaced/double line break submissions, in this perfect form of errors, will not be accepted.

Paolo wrote: Sat Jan 24, 2004 8:20 am There seems to be a line spacing problem lately with story submissions, and after testing and playing around, I have figured it out!

But now we know what the giveaway is. The spacing is the key. A typical copy/paste submission off of a WEB PAGE will yield this result every single time.

Will copy and paste from your word processing program retain the original formatting or will it be distorted?

Mac (imported) wrote: Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:38 am Will copy and paste from your word processing program retain the original formatting or will it be distorted?

As a rule, the word proc. program's format is NOT preserved. The biggest problem is use of the ENTER key, which causes a double line break every time it is hit. Also, what you highlight and select as bold or italics is also lost. Believe it or not though, it's the best thing we've got for automation in posting stories.

You can read more about how the story formatter works at:

http://www.eunuch.org/format.htm

I've found that double spacing also occurs when the likes of poetry is recited & a line of script is curtailed because the poem demands that you move to another.

Is there any way to rectify this problem in my future postings?

Please forgive me, a rather computer-illiterate person, if I've missed the solution in earlier messages in this thread.

PUEROS

...

Paolo wrote: Sat Jan 24, 2004 8:13 am By the way, did you know that the latest Webster paperback dictionary (check your local bookstore now) left out the word "gullible"?

I have the Webster's New World College Dictionary 4th edition (paperback) ISBN-0-02-863119-6 (plain) and it has "gullible" in it on page 633.

I always keep it nearby to loook up words and

You too can buy it on Amazon for less that $12.00 (cheap)

Dave

But let me say, I agree with Paolo on his guidelines. They seem harsh on first reading, but they are merely asking for good prose writing. Any writer should respect his or her readers enough to deliver good prose for them to read.