Formatting style

You know what bugs me, flies buzzing around. But what else bugs me is text messages in shows are solitary between the people, and it appears these are the first ones they ever sent to one another. Despite they'd done the same thing 20 minutes before in the same episode. Bugs the shit out of me. What about you Jax? What bugs you?
I still say just use an underscore at the end of the hud messages because that's how media protrays it_
 
You know what bugs me, flies buzzing around. But what else bugs me is text messages in shows are solitary between the people, and it appears these are the first ones they ever sent to one another. Despite they'd done the same thing 20 minutes before in the same episode. Bugs the shit out of me. What about you Jax? What bugs you?
I know what you're talking about. I never paid attention to it. Like their phones auto erase messages after moving out of the app.
 
Yeah, but Stephan would never delete a message from Elana. At least not until Damon fucked her. Am I right?
I know what you're talking about. I never paid attention to it. Like their phones auto erase messages after moving out of the app.
 
Every story I've posted for probably fifteen years has had multiple instances of — because I replace them all. Special character codes shouldn't be a problem. It's probable that Laurel knows to expect them from me, but a quick note on a submission where you use > and < to generate angle brackets should prevent any mistaken HTML rejections. Special character codes are allowed, and you should absolutely replace any angle brackets with them if you don't want to lose chunks of text.
 
Okay, so i am still trying to figure this out... how does this look? Obviously VERY rough draft.

_

_

System update in progress_

_

Update complete, system reboot_

Reboot complete_

Software update initiated_

_

Software update complete_

All systems initialized_

<I>It's raining… it's always raining. I don't even have to open my eyes, I can feel it. I don't want to open my eyes, because then I have to get up and face this piss-washed city, and all the shit it contains.</I>

You have two new messages_

"Who are they from?"

Message one from unknown_

Message two from Darcy_

"Read message two." She said, still laying in bed, eyes closed.

《Hey Liara, are you going to be downtown tonight? I have someone you're going to want to meet.
Darcy》

"Reply."

Enter message when ready_

"I hadn't thought about it, but you have me intrigued. Send."

Message sent_
 
Okay, so i am still trying to figure this out... how does this look? Obviously VERY rough draft.

_

_

System update in progress_

_

Update complete, system reboot_

Reboot complete_

Software update initiated_

_

Software update complete_

All systems initialized_

<I>It's raining… it's always raining. I don't even have to open my eyes, I can feel it. I don't want to open my eyes, because then I have to get up and face this piss-washed city, and all the shit it contains.</I>

You have two new messages_

"Who are they from?"

Message one from unknown_

Message two from Darcy_

"Read message two." She said, still laying in bed, eyes closed.

《Hey Liara, are you going to be downtown tonight? I have someone you're going to want to meet.
Darcy》

"Reply."

Enter message when ready_

"I hadn't thought about it, but you have me intrigued. Send."

Message sent_
Looks good overall. Your <I> brackets should be lowercase if you're trying to italicize though.

Personally, I like having both leading and following tags instead of just the following tags you're using for system messages. That way the reader doesn't get to the end of the line of text and then have to reinterpret it with the new context.

_E.g. like this_

... but that's strictly personal preference. As long as you're consistent, what you have there works well I think.
 
Curious, I've always done it that way and it works...

Thanks for the other suggestion. I dig it
 
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Okay, so i am still trying to figure this out... how does this look? Obviously VERY rough draft.

_

_

System update in progress_

_

Update complete, system reboot_

Reboot complete_

Software update initiated_

_

Software update complete_

All systems initialized_

<I>It's raining… it's always raining. I don't even have to open my eyes, I can feel it. I don't want to open my eyes, because then I have to get up and face this piss-washed city, and all the shit it contains.</I>

You have two new messages_

"Who are they from?"

Message one from unknown_

Message two from Darcy_

"Read message two." She said, still laying in bed, eyes closed.

《Hey Liara, are you going to be downtown tonight? I have someone you're going to want to meet.
Darcy》

"Reply."

Enter message when ready_

"I hadn't thought about it, but you have me intrigued. Send."

Message sent_
That's perfect.
 
Looks good overall. Your <I> brackets should be lowercase if you're trying to italicize though.

Personally, I like having both leading and following tags instead of just the following tags you're using for system messages. That way the reader doesn't get to the end of the line of text and then have to reinterpret it with the new context.

_E.g. like this_

... but that's strictly personal preference. As long as you're consistent, what you have there works well I think.
That's how system messages work, though. The underscore is a cursor, like the one in this textbox we're using. Why would there be two?
 
That's how system messages work, though. The underscore is a cursor, like the one in this textbox we're using. Why would there be two?
You're right, that's how cursors work. It's a good point.

The reason for having two is simply ease of reading: knowing at the start of the line what the text's context is helps.
 
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