No italics found in my published story.

[kittybunny]

.....

.....

 

[KeithD]

As far as I know, you have to manually mark the italics yourself: <i>blahblahblah</i>. I always have and they always show.

 

[kittybunny]

.....

 

[KeithD]

The how-to said I had to upload in a word file and nothing else.

I noted what works. Apparently the how-to didn't work for you.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hello, my story got published today after 7 days of waiting and it does not have the italics I had. I submitted in a word file, along with a note to the reviewer that my story had italic in them. What can I do? This is my first story and I had hyped it up so much.. now all the fun is gone without it and I'm very disappointed. ㅠㅡㅠ

Not only that, but there are also blank likes where it's not supposed to have.

The least-error approach is to put the html code into your raw draft, then copy and paste the complete text into the Lit submission box, then Preview. That shows you immediately whether the code has been done correctly.

By blank lines I assume you mean the gap between paragraphs - that's the Lit format which is applied to every story.

To resubmit, clean up your text, use the same title plus the word EDIT. Add a note to the editor, submit, then wait about a week for the revised text to go up. That's the only sure-fire way to fix it.

 

[KeithD]

EB66 is right on the blank lines (assuming the problem was identified). Literotica uses a uniform presentation format across its whole story file (just like printed anthologies do). Folks should do some looking in the story file to get an idea of how their submissions should look. It isn't a free-for-all or designer's delight on formatting.

 

[kittybunny]

.....

 

[KeithD]

You're not being clear. What is "it"? Did you go look at how stories are rendered in the story file? Can you provide an example of what's happening that you don't think should be happening? Are you putting an extra line between paragraphs? That's the format here.

 

[ElectricBlue]

No it's not the generic spaces, it is just blank where it's not supposed to.

Check your raw text thoroughly. My guess is you've got some hidden html in your original file which is causing errors. This comes up often, and nearly always the error is in the document, not the publication process at Lit.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Many versions of Word or even rtf files don't play nicely with Lit. I never got any files to be posted - there were always complaints about formatting - so now I copy the entire doc and paste it into the textbox, with italics marked by HTML tags. Then I can check for spurious spacing, unrecognised characters and broken tags, before hitting Submit.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Many versions of Word or even rtf files don't play nicely with Lit. I never got any files to be posted - there were always complaints about formatting - so now I copy the entire doc and paste it into the textbox, with italics marked by HTML tags. Then I can check for spurious spacing, unrecognised characters and broken tags, before hitting Submit.

I used .txt for a long time, until one day it just went blah for some unknown reason. I then started drafting in .rtf, and found it okay, provided I paid proper attention to the html. Had a couple of glitches which were my fault (errors in the code) so I now keep html to an absolute minimum. And I now always copy paste into the submission box, no matter how long the story is, because that's a foolproof way of finding hidden errors. Errors, when found, have always been mine.

Plain text is so much less hassle.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The how-to said I had to upload in a word file and nothing else.

This is supposed to work, but sometimes it glitches. If you want to be sure, submitting markup <i>italic text</i> directly into the text submission box is the most reliable, and allows you to preview your story.

This site might be helpful with the markup: https://www.textfixer.com/html/convert-word-to-html.php

If you have multiple consecutive lines of italic, it's probably best to close and reopen the tags with each new line, like so:

<i>this line is italic</i>

<i>and so is this one</i>

Otherwise, if a page break falls in the middle of your italics, it might cause problems.

Unfortunately, whichever option you choose you'll have to wait a while for an edit to be approved.

 

[PennameWombat]

The how-to said I had to upload in a word file and nothing else.

I noted what works. Apparently the how-to didn't work for you.

I have all but twice submitted an uploaded .doc (Word 1997-2003) format, not .docx. I’ve not had issues with highlighting. I’ve had the occasional extra blank line after a section heading, but that’s it. So it’s generally reliable but it can have the odd glitch it would seem.

I’ve always made sure the file is .doc and not .docx. I’ve submitted from both a Windows system and a Linux system. In both cases, I used Libre Office to generate the .doc file as I don’t have Microsoft Word.

The other couple of times I was on my iPad so I did a copy-paste from Google Docs directly into the submission window. I deliberately avoided using highlighting to avoid having to insert HTML tags.

 

[astushkin]

I looked at your story --- I see plenty of italics and no strange blank lines

 

[ElectricBlue]

I looked at your story --- I see plenty of italics and no strange blank lines

I just looked too - looks fine to me - italics for thoughts, normal paragraph breaks.

 

[gunhilltrain]

As far as I know, you have to manually mark the italics yourself: <i>blahblahblah</i>. I always have and they always show.

Supposedly the site (Laurel?) will do the formatting for you, but it takes more time that way. I must have read that over three years ago, and now I can find the place on the site where it tells you what steps to take to accomplish that. I immediately decided that I knew enough HTML to do it myself.

By the way, does anyone know how the site would do it for you?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Just an aside, if you are using the Lit app on your Android phone to read your story, it strips out all formatting leaving you with plain text.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

Hello, my story got published today after 7 days of waiting and it does not have the italics I had. I submitted in a word file, along with a note to the reviewer that my story had italic in them. What can I do? This is my first story and I had hyped it up so much.. With the italics, it had a purpose and a fun way of reading. now all the fun is gone without it.

Even if they fix things, it's going to take a while and by then it will not be up top in the new section anymore. I'm so so very disappointed. ㅠㅡㅠ

Not only that, but there are also blank likes where it's not supposed to have.

I see plenty of italics in your story viewing it on my computer screen. If you are using the Lit Reader app on your phone, it's possible that is why you aren't seeing the italics. I think I recall in a thread from a while back that there are issues with italics in the Lit Reader app.

 

[KeithD]

Supposedly the site (Laurel?) will do the formatting for you, but it takes more time that way.

It would certainly take more of Laurel's premium time, slowing down the posting times for everyone else submitting their stories.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It would certainly take more of Laurel's premium time, slowing down the posting times for everyone else submitting their stories.

How would she even know what to do, or rather, how would the author communicate or indicate where the italics should go?

 

[ElectricBlue]

How would she even know what to do, or rather, how would the author communicate or indicate where the italics should go?

Writers submit in .doc .docx which show the formatting. She'd then have to strip back the embedded code and convert it to html and then load. I agree with KeithD on this - if authors want to use bells and whistles in their content, they should do the html coding themselves, and not place a burden on the site.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I see plenty of italics in your story viewing it on my computer screen. If you are using the Lit Reader app on your phone, it's possible that is why you aren't seeing the italics. I think I recall in a thread from a while back that there are issues with italics in the Lit Reader app.

The reader app strips out all formatting, sometime even line feeds.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Laurel has a process that, just like Smashwords converts the word .doc or .docx or .rtf file into a plain text file with the proper html codes. The formatting is done in the word doc as you wirte. I don't think she does anything manually except the illustrations in an illustrated story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Laurel has a process that, just like Smashwords converts the word .doc or .docx or .rtf file into a plain text file with the proper html codes. The formatting is done in the word doc as you wirte. I don't think she does anything manually except the illustrations in an illustrated story.

Yep. It would be beyond masochism to do it by hand on dozens of stories every day for twenty years when it can be automated.

 

[PennameWombat]

Writers submit in .doc .docx which show the formatting. She'd then have to strip back the embedded code and convert it to html and then load. I agree with KeithD on this - if authors want to use bells and whistles in their content, they should do the html coding themselves, and not place a burden on the site.

The first part of your comment is not what’s happening.

If .doc is an issue, the web owners should TELL us they don’t accept .doc files and the various other formats. WE aren’t getting paid by the web site, but they are, with our contributions (stories). If submitting a .doc file is too much trouble (costs them too much money), they could simply ban it. They haven’t.

Per updates to this thread, the OP’s issue wasn’t submitting .doc. The story is fine. Guess I should’ve looked at it before contributing above.

Laurel has a process that, just like Smashwords converts the word .doc or .docx or .rtf file into a plain text file with the proper html codes. The formatting is done in the word doc as you wirte. I don't think she does anything manually except the illustrations in an illustrated story.

Holy hell. This. Word itself has a “Save as HTML” feature! It would be my guess that Lit can afford a genuine copy of Microsoft Word… There are also other tools out there that will do this (e.g., Word2HTML). I know not what tool Laurel is using but she is not doing a manual copy-paste and inserting HTML tags. No effing way.

Whatever delays are happening with story posting is not because poor Laurel has to grind through a .doc file and create HTML tags. Whatever the process for illustrated stories, I don’t know. But if they’re too much of a problem, well, they could be banned too…