Question about html tags in stories

I thought this might be a good place to start, as I'm sure some editors have worked with formatted text. Perhaps someone here knows whether these tags end up coming through the processor.

We know that <b> and <i> come through fine for bold and italics, as do <a href=> anchors ( for Lit links only ) but what about other tags? I haven't been able to locate anything discussing other tags anywhere.

Are there certain allowed tags, or perhaps certain formatting tags that aren't allowed? ( not talking about things like scripts/etc. just formatting )

If it comes through in the preview, is it likely to come through with the tags intact once it posts? ( barring manual moderation )

Maybe it's time to write a how-to FAQ for less common tags, provided I can find out which ones work/are allowed *laugh*

<blockquote> for example. Useful for setting off something like a letter being read within the story where you're already making use of italics for thought. I know this one works during submission preview anyway, because I tested it yesterday.

What about table tags? <table><tr><td> ( doubtful, because they're so easy to mess up if you aren't careful and don't know what you're doing ) Could be useful for poetry that needs that special touch of formatting, though.

<font color> Flashbacks?

<pre> Another way to distinguish something from the rest of the text?

Anyone who knows, post up! I've grown used to utilizing some of these on my website and elsewhere to help set off things from the rest of the text, and being limited to just bold and italic is... well, limiting

Darkniciad said:

We know that <b> and <i> come through fine for bold and italics, as do <a href=> anchors ( for Lit links only ) but what about other tags? I haven't been able to locate anything discussing other tags anywhere.

Are there certain allowed tags, or perhaps certain formatting tags that aren't allowed? ( not talking about things like scripts/etc. just formatting )

Click to expand...

In order to maintain a consistent Look and Feel for Literotica, the only HTML usable without negotiation are Italics, Bold, Underline, Center and BlockQuote.

Anything else, including links to previous chapters or related stories, will be removed even if they pass the conversion/preview process.

The submission scripts used to automatically strip out ALL HTML from stories, but were modified to permit the use of author-inserted Italics, Bold, Underline and Blockquote tags without manual intervention by Laurel but I don't know what checks if any were used instead.

You might be able to slip something past Laurel if it shows up in the preview, but the last time I heard anything from Laurel was to the effect that anything which disrupts the "Literotica Look And Feel" will be removed -- i.e font/color changes, tables, etc -- unless the author could make a case for it being "necessary to the story."

That's what I needed to know. The main one was blockquote, because I had someone asking for a way to indent something to set it off, so at least we know that one will come through for sure

As to links, I've sent in an edit on one of my LST3Ks with specific notation in the moderator notes section that I was adding a link to the original author for being so kind as to donate his story... so the url link rule must not be absolute to have passed with a moderator note.

I also started adding a link to my submission page on all my new stories ( With the anchor word as Literotica ) in my Author's Notes to help foil some of the can't read a word of english just copy/paste thieves that have been cropping up in spades lately. Those seem to be going through fine too.

But anyhow, that lets me know for sure what can be used, which is the main purpose. Many thanks

Weird Harold said:

In order to maintain a consistent Look and Feel for Literotica, the only HTML usable without negotiation are Italics, Bold, Underline, Center and BlockQuote.

Anything else, including links to previous chapters or related stories, will be removed even if they pass the conversion/preview process.

The submission scripts used to automatically strip out ALL HTML from stories, but were modified to permit the use of author-inserted Italics, Bold, Underline and Blockquote tags without manual intervention by Laurel but I don't know what checks if any were used instead.

You might be able to slip something past Laurel if it shows up in the preview, but the last time I heard anything from Laurel was to the effect that anything which disrupts the "Literotica Look And Feel" will be removed -- i.e font/color changes, tables, etc -- unless the author could make a case for it being "necessary to the story."

Click to expand...

Weird Harold said:

In order to maintain a consistent Look and Feel for Literotica, the only HTML usable without negotiation are Italics, Bold, Underline, Center and BlockQuote.

Click to expand...

I just had this question the other day when submitting, so I'm glad you've brought it up, Dark. I wasn't sure about how to best do en and em dashes, and it would have been nice to have the codes included in the FAQ on HTML formatting. As it was, I figured out the codes for each, inserted them with the rest of my Bold and Italic tags, and they turned out fine on the preview (though I also left a note about what I'd done with a request for them to double check it was coming through right).

Maybe we could write the author of the original FAQ with a request to include examples for the other tags that are allowed. I think dashes especially are pretty common, and that info, along with center and blockquotes, would help a lot of authors and save the staff a fair amount of work.

I've just been submitting mine plain text with the em dashes in there, and they've been coming through fine without using any code.

My latest Laresa ( ch. 10 ) has a quick way to see them, there's an em dash in the first line and a hyphen not very far down in the first paragraph. I write in Wordpad, but transform all the double hyphens into em dashes in Word before I save the final .txt file, then just submit that way.

I need to put in an edit on Ebon and put that flashback into a blockquote. It always annoyed me that it didn't really stand out the way I wanted it to Not to mention all the stuff my new proofreader/editor have pointed out that needs fixed in all my stories

SweetErika said:

I just had this question the other day when submitting, so I'm glad you've brought it up, Dark. I wasn't sure about how to best do en and em dashes, and it would have been nice to have the codes included in the FAQ on HTML formatting. As it was, I figured out the codes for each, inserted them with the rest of my Bold and Italic tags, and they turned out fine on the preview (though I also left a note about what I'd done with a request for them to double check it was coming through right).

Maybe we could write the author of the original FAQ with a request to include examples for the other tags that are allowed. I think dashes especially are pretty common, and that info, along with center and blockquotes, would help a lot of authors and save the staff a fair amount of work.

Click to expand...

Darkniciad said:

I've just been submitting mine plain text with the em dashes in there, and they've been coming through fine without using any code.

My latest Laresa ( ch. 10 ) has a quick way to see them, there's an em dash in the first line and a hyphen not very far down in the first paragraph. I write in Wordpad, but transform all the double hyphens into em dashes in Word before I save the final .txt file, then just submit that way.

Click to expand...

Okay, I wrote in Word, then when I copied it over to Notepad, all of my dashes and ellipses came out as unrecognizable characters, so I just found the code and fixed it. I'll turn off all of the auto formatting next time and see what that does though.

SweetErika said:

Okay, I wrote in Word, then when I copied it over to Notepad, all of my dashes and ellipses came out as unrecognizable characters, so I just found the code and fixed it. I'll turn off all of the auto formatting next time and see what that does though.

Click to expand...

I never use Word's formatting, that's probably what causes the unusual characters. Starting from Wordpad in RTF format means that a lot of Word's excessive formatting gets left out of the mix.

Unless you use track changes, or otherwise want Word formatted copies for your own use, you might be well served to just start from an RTF document with no fancy Word formatting right from the get-go, since it doesn't cause as many problems when converting to plain .txt for submission to Lit. You can still take advantage of Word's auto-correct and such without having all the margins, headers, footers, paragraph marks, etc. that way.

If all else fails, copy/paste that em dash from the first line of my Laresa story here at Lit, and use double-hyphens to note them in your story, then do a find/replace when you're done. I'm leaning toward inserting them with a paste in the Wordpad version while I'm working now, as opposed to converting later.