emdash converting to double-hyphen

[Alkymist]

New to publishing on the site (long time reader). Recently published a story with several emdashes. Once it cleared and posted, I discovered that all emdashes were converted to a double-hyphen (--). Looked back at my text document that I pasted into the form and they were true emdashes. When I published Chapter 2, I made sure that everything displayed correctly. However, when it posted, it too got converted. I know Literotica is capable of publishing with emdashes because I've seen them in other stories.

I'm currently writing in Google Docs then copying and pasting over to LibreOffice (I'm on a Mac and don't have Word) where I save in the .doc format. I then do some other formatting to convert the italics and save as .txt. I go through the stories line by line in Preview Mode to make sure everything looks right after I copy it into the submission form.

Does anyone have any ideas why something looks fine in the source document, looks fine in the online preview, and then isn't fine in the final post? I'd understand if there was some behind-the-scenes code issue, but I'd think that would show up in the preview if it were causing problems. But if the preview looks good, then why does the actual online post get converted to something else?

Thanks for any help.

 

[HectorBidon]

I had this same problem in a story I published a couple weeks ago. I too use Google Docs, but I just copy and paste from Google Docs to post the story. This worked fine in the past: my em-dashes came through without problems in previous stories. But this time they were converted to double dashes. I can't swear that they were still em-dashes in the preview, but I'm pretty sure they were. Also, I had several ellipses typed out with spaces in between the dots, like this . . . and they were converted to ...

Now that I come to think of it, I was working on a PC for my previous stories, but on a Mac for my recent one. Could it be a Mac/PC issue? Now that I come to think of it, I have no idea what is actually transferred when you copy a Google-Docs special character on a particular platform and then paste it into the Lit story box.

In my older stories I used to use three dashes to type out my em-dashes---like this. It worked for a while, then they started getting converted to a single dash-like this-which was very suboptimal. So I would include a Note to Admin asking that my dashes not be converted, and that worked. Then I learned that em-dashes in the uploaded text would go through correctly, and that worked, at least until my most recent story. One workaround might be to include the actual character code for the em-dash, although I can't remember off the top of my head how to do that. Perhaps a Note to Admin asking that em-dashes be preserved might work as well.

There aren't that many non-ascii characters I ever want to include in my stories: em-dashes, ellipses, the occasional non-breakable space. It would be nice if there were an up-to-date "Writer's Resource" entry that explained how to reliably get these characters across different platforms.

 

[RejectReality]

The text processor is obviously based upon Word, and that's the only input format where you can be assured that special characters will emerge as intended.

What I do in mine is find/replace all my emdashes with the special character code.

—

That way it's being processed by HTML and will always emerge as expected. I've used codes for fanciful scene breaks and such as well. Most of them work, although there are a few here and there ( such as the diamonds suit ) that do fail.

If you're simply making sure basic characters such as emdashes and ellipses emerge as expected, it shouldn't be a problem. It's only when you start playing with wingdings or accented characters that you may encounter problems.

 

[Alkymist]

The text processor is obviously based upon Word, and that's the only input format where you can be assured that special characters will emerge as intended.

What I do in mine is find/replace all my emdashes with the special character code.

—

I would have thought that having saved the document in a Word format would have been sufficient. It's also weird that it shows up fine in the preview.

Thanks for the HTML code. I will try that, though I admit I'm a bit nervous since it may look good in the preview and not look good in the final product. A double dash isn't great, but it's better than an HTML code that didn't translate.

 

[Alkymist]

There aren't that many non-ascii characters I ever want to include in my stories: em-dashes, ellipses, the occasional non-breakable space. It would be nice if there were an up-to-date "Writer's Resource" entry that explained how to reliably get these characters across different platforms.

I agree - an updated list of acceptable codes would be great. I've successfully converted italics, but have little need for anything else. My ellipses come through just fine as written. I've even used the following for indenting an entire section (I use two different percentages for Sender/Responder text messages):

<p style="margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%;”>
follow with </p> which also counts as carriage return

I came across this after scouring the threads trying to learn just how this entire system works.

 

[RejectReality]

I would have thought that having saved the document in a Word format would have been sufficient. It's also weird that it shows up fine in the preview.

Thanks for the HTML code. I will try that, though I admit I'm a bit nervous since it may look good in the preview and not look good in the final product. A double dash isn't great, but it's better than an HTML code that didn't translate.

I've used it in all of mine in three pen names for years, and never had it falter. Make sure it's typed exactly, and it shouldn't be a problem. Find/Replace is the perfect process. You only have to type and check it once, then it exactly replaces the original emdashes with the code. No accidentally adding spaces or fudging the code one out of twenty times, etc.

( I'm aware that I technically use mine incorrectly, with a space before and after the emdash. That's not a product of the processor, it's me being a stubborn, lazy ass. LOL The shortcut WP uses to create them is dashes followed by a space, and immediately backspacing that space reverses the whole thing. You have to come back and eliminate the space after starting the next word, so I don't. Whenever I use it to represent cut-off speech, I take the extra time to eliminate the space between it and the preceding word, and that works just fine as well when replacing with the character code. )

The preview for some reason doesn't use the exact same process as the final processor. There are a few rare things that show up fine in preview that come out wonky in the final. — isn't one of them though.