Story Formatting - Important Question

[Garmonbozia]

I was just wondering what kind of formatting the stories go through when they are added to the site.

I write in wordpad, and save the file in rtf. I do this so certain parts of the format of the story (such as bold, indentation and tabulation) remain in the story. But once I have submitted I notice that the format of the story changes, there are a lot more spaces (empty lines) between paragraphs and text.

So if Jinn or someone could answer the question of what formatting happens to these files and is there something I can do to make it easier and ensure my story appears as I write it, I would be very appreciative.

My latest chapter has a lot of tabulation, to delineate an excerpt from another document from the normal text, and I fear that it will appear as gobbledegook once it is up on the site.

Jason

[GaryWilcox]

Jinn recently updated his take on formatting. You can now use the standard formatting in WordPad files... bold, italics, underline, colors, just as you can on this forum. Check out some of the newer stories to see this in action.

[Garmonbozia]

This has not happened with my story. None of the tabulation has survived and even the paragraph structure I write in has not been transferred to the downloadable version.

Can anyone provide any insight into this problem and how I can fix it. Should I be writing the story in a more compatible format? I don't mind overly much but I am just thinking of the ease of use for the readers.

Jason

[j]

Should I be writing the story in a more compatible format? I don't mind overly much but I am just thinking of the ease of use for the readers.

Jason

Most grateful for that! Formatting of paragraphs is especially important, in Text (.TXT) files it is not always apparent as there are a lot of parasitic carriage returns. May I suggest that TWO carriage returns should separate two paragraphs, THREE when you want a space to separate them.

If you want to use BOLD or ITALIC typefaces for stressing some words/sentences, you need to post RTF files.

Tabulations are nice, but there are so many different formats and printers it is a hopeless task. I usually reconstruct them, even if there is a tabulation pattern from the start.

[Garmonbozia]

I am writing in RTF so I can have some form of formatting but when it is submitted, everything changes. I notice now that stories are downloadable from the html symbol. Can we get a response from Jinn as to what happens to a story once posted.

I used tabulation in my latest chapter as one of my characters was reading an excerpt from a book and I wanted the excerpt clearly delineated from the rest of the text, so I indented in. However now everything is right justified.

There also seems to be a lot of linespaces in the text. In a conversation I always put each new speakers text on a different line, yet once the story is submitted this is changed to a line between them. See below

"Hello how are you," said speaker 1.
"Good thank you and you," said speaker 2.
"I am good too," replied speaker 1.

And once it has been formatted:

"Hello how are you," said speaker 1.

"Good thank you and you," said speaker 2.

"I am good too," replied speaker 1.

Needless to say my dialogue and writing is slightly snappier than that but you get the picture. As I said I am not overly worried about this as the story does not become unreadable or even difficult to read but I want to understand the process of what happens once I submit a story as well.

Jason

[Tiger]

Sorry I didn't notice this thread. You may want to email me directly so we could have solved this problem sooner

I switched the story format from plain text to htm format so that it's possible to execute some more advanced formatting requests like yours. I use software to convert the Word (doc) or RTF files to htm format. In the conversion, only some formats will be retained. That's why the tables disappeared in your story. For making those kinds of formats available, I will have to add it manually. Could you please send me the rtf file again and let me know which parts of your story need to change?

If you want to have less line space, hit Shift-Enter in your word processor, not just Enter key. This will be automatically converted to <br> html code instead of <p>. <br> will give the format you want.

Whenever you see some desired formats not showing in your story text, just email me and I will make the change. I use the html format so that anyone has a browser will see the same format (well, almost). I know you want a simple one-step sucessful conversion, but I just couldn't figure out an easier way.

Jinn

[Garmonbozia]

Thanks Jinn, I don't want to put you to any trouble just for a small part of my story. I was just wondering if there was something I could do on my end to be a little more compatible. Gary's answer kind of threw me off as I began to think that it was just the way I was saving it that was a problem. I'll let you know in future if I have need of any special formatting.

Jason

[GaryWilcox]

Sorry 'bout that!

When it comes to the technical, I'm sooo stupidly certain everyone is reading my mind at the same time they're reading the text, so I don't have to complete my thoughts there... My bad, my bad!

[T-Luv]

A couple notes about HTML:

- Indentation of the first line of a paragraph will not translate to HTML, without getting into CSS formatting. Since Jinn is using software to make the conversion to HTML, rather than doing it by hand, I suspect the software doesn't generate CSS

- If you want something set off from the main body text - for example, the book excerpt that sugeneg mentioned - the block quote tag should be used:

<blockquote> Set off text </blockquote>

The blockquote tag will indent the text between the tags on both the left and the right.

When I submit a story, I send Jinn two files: a plain text version for him to convert to HTML, and a PDF version which retains all of my preferred formatting. I ask Jinn to leave my PDF file as-is, and he has always honored my request. The advantage of a PDF file is that it will retain the formatting on all computer platforms. Other formats may not. Of course, I can save PDF files natively from Mac OS X - if you're using Windows you may need third-party software.