Italics and Formatting

[BillandKate]

My apologies in advance, I'm certain this has been covered before, but I can't seem to find the proper thread.

How do I get the text in my draft to accept italics and bold, etc.?

I've noticed other stories have italics, but when I cut and paste my story from Word, the formatting disappears and I can't figure out how to get it back in the Full Screen Text Editor.

How are you other authors getting your formatting to work?

Thanks,
Bill

 

[oggbashan]

For Italics use left arrow i right arrow at start and left arrow /i right arrow at end.

For Bold, replace i with b.

It is easiest done with 'make changes' after preview.

For a fuller explanation, look at this:

https://www.literotica.com/s/bold-or-italic

 

[BelleCanzuto]

What Ogg said - if you're copying and pasting, then you have to use HTML code.

OTOH if you write the document in word, and upload it as a file, then the formatting seems to stay. That's how i submit, and I haven't had any problems.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Be aware that not all reader devices support html, and will send it back to plaintext. Also be aware that coding can glitch across Lit page breaks, and cock your published text up badly - html errors can create text formats you don't want. I used it for a dozen or so stories, thinking I was clever, but it ended being far more hassle than benefit. I only use plaintext now.

 

[oggbashan]

I tend to put the tags in Word before copy and paste.

But I use them sparingly.

 

[Inkhorn]

I just submit everything as an .rtf. Problem solved.

 

[BumbleCat]

I just submit everything as an .rtf. Problem solved.

This is what I do, too. It maintains the italics and bold. And it's easy since I just download from Google docs as rich text.

 

[Hypoxia]

Be aware that not all reader devices support html, and will send it back to plaintext. Also be aware that coding can glitch across Lit page breaks, and cock your published text up badly - html errors can create text formats you don't want. I used it for a dozen or so stories, thinking I was clever, but it ended being far more hassle than benefit. I only use plaintext now.

This. Assume your audience will see only plaintext and you can't go wrong. And make no assumptions about your readers' screen sizes.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I just submit everything as an .rtf. Problem solved.

That's what I did. Yes, you can see the html code, but don't assume it gets processed cleanly by Laurel, and all it takes is one wrong character or space and it all goes pear-shaped.

It can go wrong, and then requires an edit to fix or you leave it, leaving it messy. I've done both, and now don't bother with html at all.

 

[BillandKate]

oggbashan

oggbashan
We tried to format using your suggestion of <i> text </i> and it seemed to work. Our next story was submitted for publication; we'll see how well we did with the formatting - fingers crossed.

Thanks for your help - and thanks to you all for your suggestions and support. What a great bunch of people/authors on this site.

B&K

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

In my experience, if you upload the document, rather than copy and paste the test, all the formatting will be retained - although you have to leave a message to the powers that be ASKING for it to be retained.

That usually works, although my preference for centred chapter numbers doesn't always work its way through the system.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Here is an example of the way I do it... this is in a word document, I then copy and paste into the text box. Works every time.

<b>Copyright</b> © <i>2019 - This is an original work by Zeb Carter and is protected under copyright by U.S. copyright law. It is only submitted at Literotica.Com and any submission to any other site has not been authorized by the Copyright Holder/Author.</i>

<b>Author's Note</b>: The life of the Twins continues. Sorry for how long it took this time. First, my desktop crashed, motherboard, then the power supply crapped out. Took a week for the motherboard and a month for the replacement power supply. Besides, writing is a fickle task... you don't always get to write about what you want. So, my apologies.


<b>Part 15 ~~~~~</b>

ETA:

Now, just an informational tidbit, if you are going to use <center></center> to center some text and are going to paste it into the submission text box, go not place an extra carriage return between the centered text and the next line of text.

ie.

<center><b>Title of the Story</b></center>
Next line of the story text.

The centering of the text tag <center> will be changed to

<p align="center"></p>

The <p tag places hard non-breaking return.

So, when the story is posted or even in the preview you will see this....

Title of the Story​

The next line of the story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Here's a really useful one Zeb posted a while back about how to use advanced search and replace to add the HTML markup to all the bold/italics in a document: http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=75251424&postcount=8

 

[TomorrowGent]

<i>Deleted</i>

 

[BillandKate]

Thanks again

More good suggestions, thanks. Don't know why it took us so long to ask for help.

Just saw the results today of the <i> hint, and it worked.

Bill

 

[Hypoxia]

More good suggestions, thanks. Don't know why it took us so long to ask for help.

Just saw the results today of the <i> hint, and it worked.

If you have an Android phone or tablet, download the LIT app and see what your story looks like.

 

[Isabel_Innuende]

Formatting questions in the year 2020

That's what I did. Yes, you can see the html code, but don't assume it gets processed cleanly by Laurel, and all it takes is one wrong character or space and it all goes pear-shaped.

It can go wrong, and then requires an edit to fix or you leave it, leaving it messy. I've done both, and now don't bother with html at all.

I'm bumping this thread from years ago because it's what came up when I did a search about formatting. I make heavy use of Italics in my new story, and I'm not sure which is the best option:

1. Just make the sacrifice and upload it without any Italics, thus sacrificing some of the subtle nuance in the story, but ensuring that it will remain consistent across any browser or reader software that the reader uses.

2. Carefully submit it with HTML tags, hoping that I've done them correctly that it will all work out.

3. Upload a Word .docx file with the Italics intact, and leave a note for Laurel that I would like the formatting kept in the upload.

Further questions: If I am going with Option #2 (that is, upload my own HTML tags), is there a chance that it will end up looking very wonky and you'll end up seeing the tags in the final story? Is this something likely to happen?

And, if I go with option #3, does my note for Laurel need to be in the body of the text, at the top as suggested, or would it suffice to put it in the "Note to Admin (optional, not published)" field?

 

[ElectricBlue]

1. Just make the sacrifice and upload it without any Italics, thus sacrificing some of the subtle nuance in the story, but ensuring that it will remain consistent across any browser or reader software that the reader uses.

I think nuance is in the words you write, not in the tilt you give them. Write the right words and you don't need italics. If you need to label your subtlety, then it's not really subtle, is it?

To answer your second question - yes, html can go wrong, and can go spectacularly wrong. I've seen stories with a whole page gone to italics, because the html went wrong over a page break.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Just as an aside... if you are writing a long section that you want in italics you have to make sure that it will not span a lit page. Lit pages are approx. 3750 words long. With that information you can get a pretty good read on where the page breaks will come in a word document.

A sentence here or there in italics will most likely never cross a page boundary.

And as Hypoxia hinted at, the lit app, which a lot of users use to read stories here, strips out all HTML tags. It also still has quit a few bugs in that code as it also strips out some non-HTML things.

 

[Isabel_Innuende]

I think nuance is in the words you write, not in the tilt you give them. Write the right words and you don't need italics. If you need to label your subtlety, then it's not really subtle, is it?

I will take on board the point you are making. I think maybe you are saying that Italics are lazy writing, and I can see this point of view. I will be more aware of my tendency to lean on Italics (no pun intended) in future. I think I have a bit of a love affair with Italics (and parentheses) that may not be serving me well.

To answer your second question - yes, html can go wrong, and can go spectacularly wrong. I've seen stories with a whole page gone to italics, because the html went wrong over a page break.

Damn. I have ended up submitting three stories today, each of which had Italics in them. Of course, I checked them out in the preview and they looked good to me, but I'm assuming it's still possible for something to go wrong with the coding between now and then. My instinct is to wait and see, but I might have to resubmit if something goes horribly awry.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm just getting started, but I would love to some day reach your level of professionalism and success.

 

[Isabel_Innuende]

Just as an aside... if you are writing a long section that you want in italics you have to make sure that it will not span a lit page. Lit pages are approx. 3750 words long. With that information you can get a pretty good read on where the page breaks will come in a word document.

A sentence here or there in italics will most likely never cross a page boundary.

And as Hypoxia hinted at, the lit app, which a lot of users use to read stories here, strips out all HTML tags. It also still has quit a few bugs in that code as it also strips out some non-HTML things.

Thanks. I'll bear that in mind. I don't have any long strings of text in Italics, but I suppose I have one or two short sentences in Italics. I would have to be extremely unlucky to have any of them cut across the page, but it is a possibility. I'll make sure to check if and when my stories are accepted for publication.

 

[KeithD]

I copy and paste, manually provide the italics coding, and preview. I've never known the story then to screw up what I've seen in the preview. Now that you can't see where pages break when you preview (you could in the old system), I suppose there might be problems generated when the page breaks in the middle of italics, but I haven't seen an example of that yet.

 

[Isabel_Innuende]

I copy and paste, manually provide the italics coding, and preview. I've never known the story then to screw up what I've seen in the preview. Now that you can't see where pages break when you preview (you could in the old system), I suppose there might be problems generated when the page breaks in the middle of italics, but I haven't seen an example of that yet.

Yeah. I previewed them and they all looked good, so hopefully there will be no major dramas.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah. I previewed them and they all looked good, so hopefully there will be no major dramas.

Look at them again when they post and let us know if something went awry.

 

[HectorBidon]

I don't think I've ever seen a Lit page break in the middle of a paragraph. So if you always close out an HTML command in the same paragraph you open it, you'll probably be all right. If you want italics in consecutive paragraphs, apply the HTML to each paragraph individually.