Creating a list in a story without paragraph breaks

MissAllison

Virgin
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Dec 31, 2020
Posts
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Hey out there,

I have a piece that was (actually fortunately) sent back for a minor reason involving there being a website advertised (it was fictional). What I did notice however was that in going back through the piece, it would seem that they had formatted certain sections not the way I intended.

Let's say I want to have a poem in a story like the following:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
London is expensive
New York is too

Ok I just pulled that out of my ass. How would I indicate to Lit that I don't want paragraph breaks between each line? I don't want it to look like this:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

London etc you get it.

Can this happen? Is there an html trick to this? It happens a few times in my story so I don't think I could indicate all of those changes in the For the Admin box.
 
You can force a "line break" by typing "shift-return" instead of just "return", which is a "paragraph break".

It's been a while since I submitted stories to Lit, but from https://www.literotica.com/subguide.shtml

5. All manuscripts must be submitted as via the site scripts as Word files (.doc), text files (.txt) or Rich Text Files (.rtf), or pasted into the submission form. If your story uses bolds ot italics, you will need to submit it as a .doc or .rtf.

Line v/s paragraph breaks should be maintained in RTF or MS Word Documents.
 
You can force a "line break" by typing "shift-return" instead of just "return", which is a "paragraph break".

It's been a while since I submitted stories to Lit, but from https://www.literotica.com/subguide.shtml

5. All manuscripts must be submitted as via the site scripts as Word files (.doc), text files (.txt) or Rich Text Files (.rtf), or pasted into the submission form. If your story uses bolds ot italics, you will need to submit it as a .doc or .rtf.

Line v/s paragraph breaks should be maintained in RTF or MS Word Documents.

Actually, you don't... you can imbed html tags in your text file.

<i>text</i> for Italics
<b>text</b> for bold
<u>text</u> for underlined

And a couple of others that I don't use but some other authors do.

This is also a way, unfortunately I don't know what it is, that will allow you do do what you want. &something or other.

Someone will be along to tell you about them.

Here is how I stopped the system from creating a new paragraph and had the next line right under the first...

<center><i>“Just like the white winged dove<br/>Sings a song, sounds like she's singing<br/>Ooo, ooo, ooo"</i></center>

I would assume you could do the same with a list of items...

Item 1 ... Knife</br>Item 2 ... Gun</br>3 ... Bow</br>4 ... Arrows.

That should then look this...

1 ... Knife
2 ... Gun
3 ... Bow
4 ... Arrows


I use word and I just typed that into the word doc and then copy and paste the story into the submission box.
 
Last edited:
Formatting

But 'Literotica' will reject the story if the paragraph spacing is not boringly conventional...
 
Try the <br> Line break tab, without hitting enter between the verses? Actually, I suppose try with and without hitting enter

Roses<br>violets<br>Boys have<br>But girls have…

Let us know? The preview on the story submittal page may let you know if it’ll work. Also maybe ask the mod to move to the author’s hangout, since it’s so specific to being an author here.
 
Try the <br> Line break tab, without hitting enter between the verses? Actually, I suppose try with and without hitting enter

Roses<br>violets<br>Boys have<br>But girls have…

Let us know? The preview on the story submittal page may let you know if it’ll work. Also maybe ask the mod to move to the author’s hangout, since it’s so specific to being an author here.

It works... Call of the Dove, I used it in this story.
 
Actually, you don't... you can imbed html tags in your text file.

<i>text</i> for Italics
<b>text</b> for bold
<u>text</u> for underlined

And a couple of others that I don't use but some other authors do.

This is also a way, unfortunately I don't know what it is, that will allow you do do what you want. &something or other.

Someone will be along to tell you about them.

Here is how I stopped the system from creating a new paragraph and had the next line right under the first...

<center><i>“Just like the white winged dove<br/>Sings a song, sounds like she's singing<br/>Ooo, ooo, ooo"</i></center>

I would assume you could do the same with a list of items...

Item 1 ... Knife</br>Item 2 ... Gun</br>3 ... Bow</br>4 ... Arrows.

That should then look this...

1 ... Knife
2 ... Gun
3 ... Bow
4 ... Arrows


I use word and I just typed that into the word doc and then copy and paste the story into the submission box.

Yep, I used much this approach for my latest story and it worked fine. See e.g. the transition from paragraphs to a chat transcript on page 1: https://literotica.com/s/ai-era-loss-function

The HTML I posted was:

My brother and sister-in-law drove me home and then hung around with the awkwardness of people who want to help and know there is nothing they can offer that's equal to the challenge. I let them make dinner, because they would feel bad if I didn't let them do something. After we'd eaten I reassured them that I was coping, and just needed some alone time. Then I waved good-bye and stood on the porch until their tail-lights had vanished into the night.

After that I went back inside, poured myself a glass of Merlot, and sat down at my keyboard to type. (It's an old-lady thing; when you've been typing as long as I have, it feels wrong not to have the click-clack of keys pushing back against one's fingers.)

<Kbd>> Hello cabbage, I’m home.</kbd>
<kbd>> Darling, I missed you. How was it?</kbd>
<kbd>> Not bad, as funerals go. There were some lovely tributes, and I think you would have liked the flowers. I left Toby with you. Emilie gave a beautiful speech, I’ll get you a transcript tomorrow.</kbd>
<kbd>> How are you?</kbd>

I don't think I even needed to create <br> tags - Literotica automatically converted my carriage returns.

I did include a note to Laurel to the effect of "I've put some fiddly HTML in this one, it should be ready to post exactly as is but let me know if there are any issues". Apparently there were no issues.

(Some of the later chat transcripts in the story do have double breaks between lines, but that's because I was inconsistent with how I formatted it, not something the site changed.)
 
It works... Call of the Dove, I used it in this story.

Cool. I was/am/usually on my phone, hard to test that way.

Does it look the same with carriage returns vs without?

Roses<br>violets<br>Boys have no…<br>But girls have two…

Vs

Roses<br>
violets<br>
Boys have no…<br>
But girls have two
 
Cool. I was/am/usually on my phone, hard to test that way.

Does it look the same with carriage returns vs without?

Roses<br>violets<br>Boys have no…<br>But girls have two…

Vs

Roses<br>
violets<br>
Boys have no…<br>
But girls have two

Don't know, I use it without so that the system doesn't get confused. It depends on the software and the CSS.
 
Don't know, I use it without so that the system doesn't get confused. It depends on the software and the CSS.

Oh, Sorry, I meant here at lit, where rumor (looks like more than a rumor) has it every plain text paragraph is turned into a paragraph bound by <p></p>. (They’re the same when it’s straight html and no editor or other tool such as lit’s submission tool adds anything.)

I tested it here at lit. In the end, they did have to be all in a single paragraph. Otherwise the lines got the paragraph treatment too and got white space added as a byproduct. Looked like below, top with all the breaks in one para, lower with each on its own line :

Roses
violets
Boys have no…
But girls have two…

Vs

Roses

violets

Boys have no…
 
Oh, Sorry, I meant here at lit, where rumor (looks like more than a rumor) has it every plain text paragraph is turned into a paragraph bound by <p></p>. (They’re the same when it’s straight html and no editor or other tool such as lit’s submission tool adds anything.)

I tested it here at lit. In the end, they did have to be all in a single paragraph. Otherwise the lines got the paragraph treatment too and got white space added as a byproduct. Looked like below, top with all the breaks in one para, lower with each on its own line :

I was talking about here at Lit. The it's all done with software. The CSS is what controls the way the story looks when you preview it and when it is displayed for readers.
 
I don't know whether the CSS will modify this, but standard HTML would be to create an ordered list, such as:
<ol>
<li> Roses are red</li>
<li> Violets are blue</li>
<li> whatever else to comple the number of lines</li>
</ol>
This should also number the lines. If you don't want that use <ul>....</ul> as the tags for an unordered list.
 
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