Line break formating (a.k.a. "Literotica leaves me at my wits end")

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

So what is the magic behind getting my line breaks to look like they are supposed to after something gets published?

Because in the Word document I wrote my latest story out in, I kept dialogue and blocks of text tight at times, for reasons of pacing.
And I did make sure to drop the entire thing into notepad, to get it scrubbed of all formatting Word might have caused.
And I did double-check things in the editor before I submitted.
So when I hit the button, a block of text would look like this:

“Well that sure isn’t Ardbeg 10” I said with a raised eyebrow, as Derek fell into the other couch across from me.
“You’re absolutely right. And you should know what it is.”
He was wearing a smirk.
I took a sip, and felt my insides melt a little bit as my palate was first hit by the booze, before noticing that it was a whole lot smoother than the first kick would suggest. And then it faded away into sweet, fruity tastes.
“Damn… that’s the Cuvee, isn’t it?”
“It absolutely is.”
It was a 21 year old scotch, that had spent some of its life in wine casks. The stuff sold for roughly $130 per bottle. Booze old enough to purchase its own booze. Smooth as all fuck.
“Fucking hell brother, what’s the occasion?”

Yet after being published, text is suddenly widely spaced, with double line-breaks instead of single ones, so the same block of text now looks like this:

"Well that sure isn't Ardbeg 10" I said with a raised eyebrow, as Derek fell into the other couch across from me.

"You're absolutely right. And you should know what it is."

He was wearing a smirk.

I took a sip, and felt my insides melt a little bit as my palate was first hit by the booze, before noticing that it was a whole lot smoother than the first kick would suggest. And then it faded away into sweet, fruity tastes.

"Damn... that's the Cuvee, isn't it?"

"It absolutely is."

It was a 21 year old scotch, that had spent some of its life in wine casks. The stuff sold for roughly $130 per bottle. Booze old enough to purchase its own booze. Smooth as all fuck.

"Fucking hell brother, what's the occasion?"

And sometimes,

 

[AwkwardMD]

Did you put the story back into word after pasting it into Notepad? Did you submit your story as a .docx, a .txt, or paste the entire thing into the text box?

If you did either of the latter two this probably wouldn't have happened, but if it's the first one that tracks.

 

[lc69hunter]

I write in WordPerfect, but publish in *.rtf. Have had no problems

 

[AwkwardMD]

I write in WordPerfect, but publish in *.rtf. Have had no problems

OP's problem is not the normal experience for any of the major text editing programs or file extensions. Some other aberration caused this

 

[AwkwardMD]

Or Laurel did this because the site does not want un-spaced blocks of text

 

[NotWise]

i think you may be trying to milk too much out of typography. The site exercises a lot of control over typography, and you should depend on the content rather than layout to convey the idea.

You might be able to do something by embedding html. Place an html break "<br>" where you want the site to break the line, and don't break the line in your text. I don't know if the site allows "<br>", but maybe someone else here can tell you.

 

[liftmykilt]

Interesting. My experience is different. I like the extra space. The single story I published by uploading my Word file had the wider spacing I prefer. I find when I copypasta the text into the editor, that it tightens up the space, and I've learned to add the extra line break in Word, otherwise I have to go through the entire story in the editor and add a line at each break. (Which isn't a bad exercise as I typically find 'one more thing' to tweak).

 

[shelleycat1]

This thread discussed similar things
https://forum.literotica.com/threads/on-line-editor-tips.1624327/

 

[RejectReality]

Lit's standard is double-spaced. It's what's expected, and your submission can even get rejected for having too much single-spaced text that requires correction before publication.

You can request that sections remain single-spaced via a note to the moderator at the time of submission. You can even use <br> to code that in. Neither means it's going to come out that way. <br> is one of the tags that's stripped automatically. Laurel has to override that.

 

[TheLobster]

Lit renders every physical line of text you submit as a separate <p> element. There is “double” or “single” spacing here; the padding and margins between paragraphs are decided by the stylesheet applied to the story page. There are no empty lines in the rendered HTML, as any empty lines you might have had in the manuscript will be collapsed and eliminated.

If you do want tight formatting, keeping the entire as single physical line and inserting manual <br> is an option. I’d only ever do that for verse and things like chat transcripts, though. It seems that it’s a deliberate choice to make it otherwise inconvenient, in the effort to break walls of text that are hard to read on mobile.

 

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

Lit renders every physical line of text you submit as a separate <p> element. There is “double” or “single” spacing here; the padding and margins between paragraphs are decided by the stylesheet applied to the story page. There are no empty lines in the rendered HTML, as any empty lines you might have had in the manuscript will be collapsed and eliminated.

If you do want tight formatting, keeping the entire as single physical line and inserting manual <br> is an option. I’d only ever do that for verse and things like chat transcripts, though. It seems that it’s a deliberate choice to make it otherwise inconvenient, in the effort to break walls of text that are hard to read on mobile.

Thank you! That explains absolutely everything I wanted to know, and more.

 

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

First, the text should feel airy, but what you’re aiming for seems rather condensed.

I do try to leave things airy. But sometimes as I write, things that *I* feel belongs in a tight block for pacing reasons, gets spaced and stretched.
Six lines of dialogue back and forth, doesn't really need to take up half a page.

 

[ConfusinglyDelerious]

Did you put the story back into word after pasting it into Notepad? Did you submit your story as a .docx, a .txt, or paste the entire thing into the text box?

If you did either of the latter two this probably wouldn't have happened, but if it's the first one that tracks.

Copied into Notepad, got the formating as I felt it should be. Then pasted it from Notepad and into the the text box.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Copied into Notepad, got the formating as I felt it should be. Then pasted it from Notepad and into the the text box.

Then Laurel added those spaces.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yet after being published, text is suddenly widely spaced, with double line-breaks instead of single ones, so the same block of text now looks like this

The site has defaulted your content to traditional paragraph spacing, with a line break between each dialogue slug and each paragraph. Your desire for a compressed format would have been seen as incorrect formatting, and must have been fixed by the site editor. Usually, text like that would have been rejected for incorrect formatting.

The site has a house style for the presentation of content (standard font, font size, left justified, right ragged), which maximizes compatibility with different devices and, most importantly, avoids "walls of text". This includes a space between paragraphs.

 

[Britva415]

i think you may be trying to milk too much out of typography. The site exercises a lot of control over typography, and you should depend on the content rather than layout to convey the idea.

You might be able to do something by embedding html. Place an html break "<br>" where you want the site to break the line, and don't break the line in your text. I don't know if the site allows "<br>", but maybe someone else here can tell you.

The site does allow <br/> but I wouldn’t include it in a rtf or word doc. All html or none, or results probably won’t be reliable in either format.

 

[gunhilltrain]

i think you may be trying to milk too much out of typography. The site exercises a lot of control over typography, and you should depend on the content rather than layout to convey the idea.

You might be able to do something by embedding html. Place an html break "<br>" where you want the site to break the line, and don't break the line in your text. I don't know if the site allows "<br>", but maybe someone else here can tell you.

It certain does allow the <br> code, which works fine. Somebody here suggested it for poetry, but I don't think we can reproduce huge pieces of poems unless they are in the public domain.

Definitely don't put a paragraph break at the end of a line for what you want to do. I think the line break function (Shift-enter) might work too, but I've never tried it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Dialogue is meant to have a new paragraph for every speaker. So unless you put a Note to Laurel confirming it's intentional, and you use the <br> tag, it'll be rendered that way.

I had the opposite problem in my Summer story last year - the preamble included song lyrics and it was rejected with a 'Go stick <br> tags in after each line'. Next attempt rejected because I missed a couple, but then it worked.

 

[liftmykilt]

Dialogue is meant to have a new paragraph for every speaker. So unless you put a Note to Laurel confirming it's intentional, and you use the <br> tag, it'll be rendered that way.

In print, a new paragraph (it's my understanding that a new speaker requires a new paragraph too), is delineated with a line break, and then a 5 space tab indent. On the web, it's a paragraph break, which looks like a double line break. <p> vs. <br><br>.

Who or what is this Laurel people keep mentioning?

 

[SimonDoom]

In print, a new paragraph (it's my understanding that a new speaker requires a new paragraph too), is delineated with a line break, and then a 5 space tab indent. On the web, it's a paragraph break, which looks like a double line break. <p> vs. <br><br>.

Who or what is this Laurel people keep mentioning?

Laurel owns and operates the Site.

 

[RejectReality]

Unless things have changed in recent updates, the <br> tag is not a guarantee. It's been allowed, but required Laurel to override the standard behavior of the text-processor. So if she doesn't do that, it comes out double-spaced.

If you're expecting it to be a cure-all for your preferred, non-standard formatting, you could very well be in for a rude awakening.

 

[Britva415]

I think the line break function (Shift-enter) might work too, but I've never tried it

It gets re-formatted into a paragraph with paragraph spacing.

The break tag without a line-wrap is necessary, to get the front-end to break a line without a paragraph space.

 

[Britva415]

Unless things have changed in recent updates, the <br> tag is not a guarantee. It's been allowed, but required Laurel to override the standard behavior of the text-processor. So if she doesn't do that, it comes out double-spaced.

I don't know about the history, but I know about the present:

If we enter a <br>
and a line-break, the line-break will get reprocessed into a paragraph-break (the double spacing).

If we enter a <br> and no line-break, before or after the tag, then, we'll get a single-spaced line-break in the published story output.

Again: This probably only works in the text-input box. I don't expect this to work reliably if someone just puts the characters "<br>" in a rtf or word doc, but I don't write that way, so, no idea.

 

[RejectReality]

I don't know about the history, but I know about the present:

If we enter a <br>
and a line-break, the line-break will get reprocessed into a paragraph-break (the double spacing).

If we enter a <br> and no line-break, before or after the tag, then, we'll get a single-spaced line-break in the published story output.

Again: This probably only works in the text-input box. I don't expect this to work reliably if someone just puts the characters "<br>" in a rtf or word doc, but I don't write that way, so, no idea.

I'm just saying don't be surprised if one comes out with everything double-spaced. I had a pretty good track record of mine going through for a while with the formatting and a request in the notes section, and then bing!

I hope you're right, because I won't have to worry about the rhyming couplets for my witch spells coming out all ugly ever again, but most of them didn't until they did. You could just be on a lucky streak of Laurel noticing it and being in a giving mood.

 

[Britva415]

You could just be on a lucky streak of Laurel noticing it and being in a giving mood.

I think the system works the way she wants it to. I don't believe she's picking apart people's HTML code.