Best format for submissions - RTF, DocX, or something else?

[Madd_Maxxine]

What is the preferred format for story submissions here?

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I write raw html into the submissions form. (Well, I copy and paste it from a file, of course.)

 

[gunhilltrain]

I use Word plain text, but that may not be crucial. What is "raw" HTML? I do add the coding inside the submission box rather than in the word processing file.

 

[Madd_Maxxine]

I'm not sure I know what Word "plain" text is.
Is RTF accepted?

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I use Word plain text, but that may not be crucial. What is "raw" HTML? I do add the coding inside the submission box rather than in the word processing file.

I mean I copy-paste plain text that has HTML tags in it, like

"<em>Fuck!</em>" he shouted.

 

[KeithD]

I've always done cut and paste into the submissions box. Haven't had a problem with that.

 

[lc69hunter]

What is the preferred format for story submissions here?

I use WordPerfect, which is still the best Word Processor ever invented (It still owns 72% of the law firm market). So my only real choice has been to submit as an rtf file.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I cut and paste into the submissions box (from LibreOffice). Like others I add any html (mainly <I><B> and <Center> I need.

I've heard it said that these plaintext submissions go through faster than submitting a .doc file, but I've no direct experiece with that (although my submissions do indeed usually go through speedily)

 

[VallesMarineris]

I submit in .docx format (MS Word). Never had a problem. I use italics, em dashes, etc.

Note that I don't write in Word. But all the apps I've used can export to Word, so that's what I do.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What is the preferred format for story submissions here?

Copy paste into the submission box is foolproof, and if you preview, WYSIWYG. Uploading files works okay for some, but can be problematic for others. I've had problems in the past with .doc .rtf .txt - all of which have eventually caused hassles, but never had a problem when using the submission box.

 

[Writer61]

I write in MS Word, save in docx format, and upload. Nine stories have been published, no problems so far.

For the first couple of stories, I used my normal.dotx template, which is a lightly tweaked version of the default. More recent stories used a simplified template limited to the formatting options LIT allows.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I write using MS Word on a laptop.

I write longer stories than most here. (Average of 50K words)

I'm also inherently lazy, so I tend to do the same things the same way as much as possible.

The result of all this is that I submit stories on Lit the same way that would I send them to my editors or any other recipients, and that is by sending the MS Word 'docx' file directly to them. It has worked fine for me over the past ten years.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I never got files to work - Lit objected to anything OpenOffice or LibreOffice spewed out for me - so I got used to just putting in tags for italics and bold and pasting in the text box.

 

[Madd_Maxxine]

I never got files to work - Lit objected to anything OpenOffice or LibreOffice spewed out for me - so I got used to just putting in tags for italics and bold and pasting in the text box.

What do you mean "tags" for italics and bold.

 

[Demiurging]

The submission box.

I've never had a story hold for more than a week when typed (copied) into the raw box, but I've never gotten a docx through in less than a week. Don't know what causes that on the backend, obviously, but that's my experience.

 

[Demiurging]

What do you mean "tags" for italics and bold.

Likely means <i></i> and <b></b>

 

[Madd_Maxxine]

I'd hate to

Likely means <i></i> and <b></

Ugg. I'd hate to put that in everywhere.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Ugg. I'd hate to put that in everywhere.

Keep italics and bold to a bare minimum. If your html code goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong - like turn the entire page 2 to italics, as happened to me years ago. I didn't know where the page break was, and got caught out. That taught me, don't try to be clever, the words by themselves need to do the heavy lifting, not the format.

That's one advantage of loading into the text box - you can preview any formatting, and see if it's gone wrong.

 

[Madd_Maxxine]

Keep italics and bold to a bare minimum. If your html code goes wrong, it can go spectacularly wrong - like turn the entire page 2 to italics, as happened to me years ago. I didn't know where the page break was, and got caught out. That taught me, don't try to be clever, the words by themselves need to do the heavy lifting, not the format.

That's one advantage of loading into the text box - you can preview any formatting, and see if it's gone wrong.

What's the best format to copy and paste into the text box. I currently have it in RTF or Docx.

 

[oneagainst]

plain text into the text box, if only to speed up the submission approval process and I imagine reduce the workload on Laurel's side. Opening up a word doc, scanning it for viruses, looking at the comic sans font, urggghh. just cut and paste and be done.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What's the best format to copy and paste into the text box. I currently have it in RTF or Docx.

.docx can sometimes hide formatting code. I'd save to .rtf first, to purge hidden code, and then use Preview, once you've pasted into the text box. That shows what it will look like published, and you can easily fix errors in the box.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'd hate to

Ugg. I'd hate to put that in everywhere.

Find and Replace works a treat. Takes about two minutes. I try to reduce how much italics I use, and only use bold for a heading, very rarely.

 

[MrPixel]

Another vote for .docx. As far as being "less time" to approval, I personally think that's not a factor at all, and statements alleging same are red herrings. There are many factors determining publication latency, and submission file format is pretty far down the list.

My last two submissions (.docx) were six hours from upload to approval, and it wasn't even a contest or challenge. I must have caught Laurel on a good day.

Keep italics and bold to a bare minimum.

Uh. Bold I agree with, it's clumsy in fiction. Italics, on the other hand, are very useful for conveying natural emphasis patterns in dialog. I also use underscoring with italic text when extra emphasis is needed... tho' that is done sparingly.

 

[lustychimera]

Find and Replace works a treat. Takes about two minutes. I try to reduce how much italics I use, and only use bold for a heading, very rarely.

Do you put in an asterisk or some weird symbol as a placeholder and find and replace that?

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Do you put in an asterisk or some weird symbol as a placeholder and find and replace that?

Yes, asterisks in Writerpad on my phone show up as italics there, double asterisks make bold. Then on my PC I do a spellcheck, get rid of odd spacers, put the italics and bold in, a skim read to edit as often things look different, then paste into Lit.

I tried using GoogleDocs to edit and ended up with lots of spelling replacements sitting next to the original spelling, which is really annoying, but probably not worth asking Laurel to edit now.