Little help with submission format

[Altissimus]

Hey,

So I gather most of you use the submission box to submit a new story, whereas I've always attached a word doc.

If you cut-and-paste text in, how do you format?

I'm thinking centred text, italics, bold, indented quotations, etc.

Is there a guide for this?

Thanks

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hey,

So I gather most of you use the submission box to submit a new story, whereas I've always attached a word doc.

If you cut-and-paste text in, how do you format?

I'm thinking centred text, italics, bold, indented quotations, etc.

Is there a guide for this?

Thanks

You code the html manually. Standard html, but there's no Lit specific guide.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I've had zero issues using the story upload feature to download a .docx file. Italics, centered text, no issues with any of it.

 

[Altissimus]

You code the html manually. Standard html, but there's no Lit specific guide.

Ok. Do you need to worry about font, size, paragraph dimensions etc, or is that automated?

 

[onehitwanda]

Ok. Do you need to worry about font, size, paragraph dimensions etc, or is that automated?

As far as I am aware you cannot manipulate font size, line spacing etc at all. The tags I've managed to discover that work are:

<b></b> - bold
<i></i> - italic
<hr width="x%"> - horizontal rule of x percent screen width
<center></center> - to center justify text
<p></p> - force a paragraph break
<br> - force a line break

unicode and utf-8 escapes also work, so I was able to add things like omega symbols and flower wingdings (Ω and ❀) as part of the text of my most recent work. Be warned that the automoderator may choke on these.

It's a very limited subset of html. If you have specific format requirements you may struggle.

 

[alohadave]

As far as I am aware you cannot manipulate font size, line spacing etc at all. The tags I've managed to discover that work are:



unicode and utf-8 escapes also work, so I was able to add things like omega symbols and flower wingdings (Ω and ❀) as part of the text of my most recent work. Be warned that the automoderator may choke on these.

It's a very limited subset of html. If you have specific format requirements you may struggle.

For bold and italic, make sure you close each tag, or it will affect the rest of the document.

 

[onehitwanda]

For bold and italic, make sure you close each tag, or it will affect the rest of the document.

yep - this is why when I'm pre-submission proofreading I keep the submission screen open in one tab and preview in another. Make a change, save, refresh preview tab, verify change.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Ok. Do you need to worry about font, size, paragraph dimensions etc, or is that automated?

That's all automated. All you do is copy in your text and any html you want to use.

The only thing you need to remember is to do two carriage returns at the end of each paragraph. Word paragraph spacing is irrelevant, so two returns.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've had zero issues using the story upload feature to download a .docx file. Italics, centered text, no issues with any of it.

You're lucky. Others have had repeated problems doing that, hence the questions (which are frequent), and the answers given (which have been the same for years).

I've had doc, doc(x), txt and rtf files all fuck up over the years, but the Lit Form is foolproof for my submissions, which is why I repeat the advice, knowing it works. As I say, you're the lucky one.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

You're lucky. Others have had repeated problems doing that, hence the questions (which are frequent), and the answers given (which have been the same for years).

I've had doc, doc(x), txt and rtf files all fuck up over the years, but the Lit Form is foolproof for my submissions, which is why I repeat the advice, knowing it works. As I say, you're the lucky one.

Word 97 (doc) uploads have always worked for me as well. I have never pasted into the submission box and doubt that I ever will.

 

[Altissimus]

So I had a look into it for my latest submission, but manually adding line breaks in a 14k word story didn't grab me as fun. Think I'll stick with the word doc approach and accept the delay in publishing.

All replies appreciated, thanks folks

 

[ElectricBlue]

Word 97 (doc) uploads have always worked for me as well. I have never pasted into the submission box and doubt that I ever will.

I started out using .doc, worked okay for a year or two, then .txt and .rtf - both okay for a while, then both fell over. All from the same device, which was weird.

The problems always occurred whenever Lit did an upgrade, so I'm guessing backwards compatibility ain't the best. Right now, for example, I can't access the Control Panel on my Kindle - same device, same browser, wheel of death.

To upload a story now, I have to email it to myself on another computer and upload it from there. Requires an additional layer of privacy protocol to leave no traces, since no-one in the family knows I write smut. It's a work-around, but you do what you gotta do.

 

[ElectricBlue]

So I had a look into it for my latest submission, but manually adding line breaks in a 14k word story didn't grab me as fun. Think I'll stick with the word doc approach and accept the delay in publishing.

All replies appreciated, thanks folks

You might still need to, even if you're loading a file.

I dunno, maybe Laurel's got a word bot to do it, because it's got to be done.

 

[onehitwanda]

I'm a dinosaur, so I write in text format in dumb (or at least, obedient) editors.

A computer telling me that what I just typed is wrong enrages me, a computer replacing what I just did with its own half-arsed, wrong replacement makes me visualise mass murder.

 

[Altissimus]

You might still need to, even if you're loading a file.

I dunno, maybe Laurel's got a word bot to do it, because it's got to be done.

I've always just loaded a word doc, and I've never (touch wood) had problems. 21 submissions this year, and they've all been fine. And the formatting is typically exactly what's in the doc - though it does miss italics sometimes, weirdly.

 

[Bramblethorn]

So I had a look into it for my latest submission, but manually adding line breaks in a 14k word story didn't grab me as fun.

You shouldn't generally need to. If you've been hitting Return/Enter between paragraphs, that should be preserved when you paste it into the text box. (It gets converted to <p></p> at some point but that happens automatically.)

The only time when you'd need to enter line breaks <br> is if you're doing something like poetry where you want to force a new line without the extra spacing that comes between paragraphs.

As far as I am aware you cannot manipulate font size, line spacing etc at all. The tags I've managed to discover that work are:

<kbd></kbd> works too.

I think you can justify with these:
<p align="left"></p>
<p align="right"></p>
<p align="center"></p>

They work in preview though at least, but I haven't published with them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

And the formatting is typically exactly what's in the doc - though it does miss italics sometimes, weirdly.

I could be wrong, but that might be because someone else has to code it for you.

That's one of the reasons I moved through the different formats - I thought I was being clever when someone showed me how to do html, until the html didn't run. I've still got half a dozen chapters/stories with <i> text </i> that I couldn't be bothered fixing.

 

[Laurel]

You code the html manually. Standard html, but there's no Lit specific guide.

We do have a Text Formatting FAQ here which covers basic formatting.

 

[Bramblethorn]

We do have a Text Formatting FAQ here which covers basic formatting.

One of mine uses <kbd> which isn't listed there. Is that supported by default, or was that manual intervention? (I think I flagged it in my submission note.) If the latter, thanks very much for your patience and I promise not to overuse it!