Editing / Writing For Readers Using The APP

I'm not sure if stats are available, but my understanding is that a large number of readers only use the APP to access LitE stories - via their tablets or cell phones.

The challenge with that is that no fancy formatting is visible on the app. Italics, centered text, bold, underscore ... all come through as vanilla-plain text, as if it had been written in Notepad.

That's why the commonly used format of
Oh dammit, she thought should be replaced by
'Oh dammit,' she thought (single quotes). Otherwise, the reader will simply see ...
Oh dammit, she thought ... which is hard to follow.

To accommodate app users, I use simple formatting - or re-word the narrative to avoid fancy formatting.

Sad, because italics can add a lot of expression...

Your thoughts?

Good subject for this forum.

haulover said:

Oh dammit, she thought should be replaced by
'Oh dammit,' she thought (single quotes). Otherwise, the reader will simply see ...

Click to expand...

For this part of the example, which you posted to the AH as well, I'll repeat my response on the AH:

Going back to the UK vs. U.S. style discussions, this wouldn't fly in U.S. style. In U.S. style, in contrast to UK style, the double quote is always the first level of quotation (Chicago Manual of Style, 13.28). So, for U.S. style, which is what this Web site uses, it would be:

"Oh, dammit," she thought.

Something like, "You heard her, she said 'Oh, dammit,'" Cloe said. (single quotes for a quote within a quote.)

As far as formatting for different platforms, I consider that a Web site problem/issue. That certain things can't be seen on a cell phone isn't going to make me change what is working for computer reading.

sr71plt said:

...
Going back to the UK vs. U.S. style discussions, this wouldn't fly in U.S. style. In U.S. style, in contrast to UK style, the double quote is always the first level of quotation (Chicago Manual of Style, 13.28). So, for U.S. style, which is what this Web site uses, it would be:

"Oh, dammit," she thought.

Click to expand...

Interesting - thanks for that.

haulover said:

That's why the commonly used format of
Oh dammit, she thought should be replaced by
'Oh dammit,' she thought (single quotes). Otherwise, the reader will simply see ...
Oh dammit, she thought ... which is hard to follow.

Click to expand...

Interesting... I never use italics the way you did in your example, although I have used something like this, which is similar:

He patted his pockets in confusion. Where are my keys?

I only did that in one story a long time ago and I'm pretty sure that's not correct either, since thoughts should generally have either single or double quotes around them, depending on if it was said out loud or not (as far as I'm aware). Italics can be used to put emphasis on certain words though. Some people like to use bold words for that, but I prefer the italics as it's more subtle and not as distracting.

I think it's a good thing to know that formatting options don't show up in the app so we can make sure our stories at least make sense with the formatting removed.

I use a very few ASCII codes in my stories, for example the acute e in:

fiancée

On some browsers they don't work properly.

Do they work on the App?

oggbashan said:

I use a very few ASCII codes in my stories, for example the acute e in:

fiancée

On some browsers they don't work properly.

Do they work on the App?

Click to expand...

I thought every modern browser was capable of displaying ASCII characters? That seems like one of the essential character sets a browser should support to me.

App Availability

I used to use the app a while ago. It doesn't seem to be available in the Google app store for Android any longer.

Excellent Advice

sr71plt said:

For this part of the example, which you posted to the AH as well, I'll repeat my response on the AH:

Going back to the UK vs. U.S. style discussions, this wouldn't fly in U.S. style. In U.S. style, in contrast to UK style, the double quote is always the first level of quotation (Chicago Manual of Style, 13.28). So, for U.S. style, which is what this Web site uses, it would be:

"Oh, dammit," she thought.

Something like, "You heard her, she said 'Oh, dammit,'" Cloe said. (single quotes for a quote within a quote.)

As far as formatting for different platforms, I consider that a Web site problem/issue. That certain things can't be seen on a cell phone isn't going to make me change what is working for computer reading.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the concise description and the reference.

dave_932688 said:

I used to use the app a while ago. It doesn't seem to be available in the Google app store for Android any longer.

Click to expand...

No - Google Play doesn't keep it.

You have to use a browser, go to Literotica.com, and download it - then install it. See here : http://literotica.com/android/

Sounds complicated, but it's actually quite easy.