Literotica formatting question - right-aligned line breaks

[Arr2]

I had some fairly ambitious formatting in a story I posted where I wanted some blocks of text to be right-formatted AND have line breaks:

<p align="right">Testing 1<br>
Testing 2<br>
Testing 3</p>

In other words, I wanted that code to generate three lines of text that were right-justified.

The Preview function of the story displayed text fine (more-or-less... I could live with it), but the formatting of the actual published story turned out to be broken, only right-aligning the first line and left-justifying the others.

My theory is that Literotica's code is breaking on the actual carriage return after the <br>... that is, the act of my putting in a hard return is being intrepretted by Literotica as saying, "Oh, you want this to be a new [left-aligned] paragraph."

Under this theory, formatting of this sort:

<p align="right">Testing 1<br>Testing 2<br>Testing 3</p>

...might do what I want.

However, before I submit to the weeks-long process of trying to get a story edited, I wanted to see if anyone could confirm this might work, tell me a more-accepted solution, or inform me I'm barking up a futile tree.

Thanks for any help!

 

[TheLobster]

If you check the HTML source of the story's page, you can confirm or reject your hypothesis about the extra <p>'s being inserted by Lit.

Either way, a disparity between preview and the final publication is a bug that you should report on the technical issues forum.

 

[Arr2]

Okay; I posted the report.

And, thanks for the "view the HTML" tip; that seems to confirm what I suspected about a hard return in the Literotica text editor being interpreted as a new paragraph regardless... but since I know it can take weeks for a story edit to go through, I'm holding tight to see if the tech folks get back to me before I poke at the story code again.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Plathfan]

The Preview function of the story displayed text fine (more-or-less... I could live with it), but the formatting of the actual published story turned out to be broken, only right-aligning the first line and left-justifying the others.

You cannot rely completely on the preview function. For example, an em dash might look fine when it actually needs a code. When using <br>, don't include line breaks or spaces.

For instance, the stanza:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

should be written this way:

I wandered lonely as a cloud<br>That floats on high o'er vales and hills,<br>When all at once I saw a crowd,<br> ...

 

[ElectricBlue]

However, before I submit to the weeks-long process of trying to get a story edited, I wanted to see if anyone could confirm this might work, tell me a more-accepted solution, or inform me I'm barking up a futile tree.

Thanks for any help!

The site has a "house style" which is right ragged, for consistency and, one assumes, for maximum compatibility with multiple devices.

Seems to me that you're thinking about your presentation as if it were a print book, but Lit is a digital platform. You could persevere, but ask yourself, why is your format important?

 

[TheLobster]

There's definitely some weirdness going on in how the algorithm inserts <p>'s and <br>. As far as I can tell, if I can make sense of it comparing the actual HTML of my submitted stories and the source text, it seems to be that:

• Paragraphs (<p>) are inserted when a chunk of text is surrounded by empty lines (two line feeds between it and the next one).
• Line breaks (<br>) are inserted if said chunk has single line feeds within.

I believe this is done to make the text input "intuitive," to accommodate different styles of formatting esp. with dialogue (which some authors format tightly while others like treat every new person speaking as a new paragraph, not just new line).

 

[Arr2]

Seems to me that you're thinking about your presentation as if it were a print book, but Lit is a digital platform. You could persevere, but ask yourself, why is your format important?

My goal — as a writer — is to try to be as effective as possible with the tools I have in the medium I've chosen. Although I could forgo formatting, I believe it's helpful in establishing the feel of the text as I want it, in the same way that using coded emphasis looks and feels more natural and interesting to my eye than =non-coded= emphasis that just looks _weird_ in comparison.

If Literotica didn't support right/center justifying at all, I'd certainly be accepting of that. (I still default to plain-text email, so I'm used to technical limitations.) But it does, so I'm trying to get a feel for how it works... especially navigating within the limitations of the disparity between what the Preview's showing me, what's getting published, and the days' lag thereof.

Often part of making art is trying to understand, work within, and push the boundaries of the technological restrictions of the medium chosen, in the same way that the Beatles' "I Feel Fine" used guitar feedback — usually an aural error and a sign that the musician is doing something wrong — to create one of the most memorable opening moments of a song ever. (And, yes, I am comparing myself to the Beatles, in that I am also old and half-dead.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

My goal — as a writer — is to try to be as effective as possible with the tools I have in the medium I've chosen. Although I could forgo formatting, I believe it's helpful in establishing the feel of the text as I want it, in the same way that using coded emphasis looks and feels more natural and interesting to my eye than =non-coded= emphasis that just looks _weird_ in comparison.

I guess I'm the type who says, words tell the story, not what they look like.

But yes, go for it - but I wonder how many readers will care.

 

[KeithD]

The Literotica story file is a rolling anthology. Publishers go for uniformity of presentation to give the reader a uniform look. Look in printed anthologies. You won't see much story-individualistic separation from a uniform style across the anthology. If you can't get a presentation effect you want (and sometimes even if you can), you are trying to go beyond the publisher's presentation style.

 

[Arr2]

The Literotica story file is a rolling anthology. Publishers go for uniformity of presentation to give the reader a uniform look. Look in printed anthologies. You won't see much story-individualistic separation from a uniform style across the anthology. If you can't get a presentation effect you want (and sometimes even if you can), you are trying to go beyond the publisher's presentation style.

I read a lot of printed anthologies, and that doesn't match my experience... like, at all. Quite often, the stories that most stand out in a volume are the ones that push against the grain of what a story "should" look like, in terms of its delivery, presentation, tone, etc. "Oooh, this story is told entirely via old-timey telegraphs?! How fun!"

Of course, authors selected for an anthology are generally working with the publisher to ensure they're all on the same page, rather than taking anything from any schlub off the street. Thus in such cases the author will be like, "You can do courier-bold for my telegraph story, right?" And the publisher'll say yes ahead of time. Here, we have the "confirm ahead of time" step as far as the Preview goes, but it didn't quite line up with the actual publication. Which, hey, I don't fault 'em for... I am just a schlub off the street; they don't owe me a dang thing. I'm just trying to understand the tools they do offer... and if my doing so reveals that those tools probably shouldn't exist at all, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I have the answer I need ("delete the line breaks... and if that doesn't work then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "), so I'll probably bow out of this thread... although I completely understand those who feel the need to to rag on me for daring to try something different. Just remember that they laughed at inventor Franz Reichelt when he went to test his innovative parachute design by jumping off the Eiffel Tower... where it failed and he got flattened like a pancake. All the laughers were totally right.

Thanks again!

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Not to start a which way is better, or risk have folks go on about how bOtH wAyS HaVe PrObLeMs, but I just upload my file and not worry about fancy paragragh layouts, font sizes and whatnot. Want a paragraph aligned right and slant left, there's sites with textboxes for that. I'm just satisfied with the italics being there and it getting published in a timely manner.

 

[TheLobster]

So, I just had a story sent back to correct the formatting of a chat transcript there. I originally formatted using linefeed characters only, but I got the following suggestion from LitE team:

• We noticed you have song lyrics or poetry in this work. If you want the text to display with single line spacing (like for poems or song lyrics within a story), please format as so: LINE 1<br>LINE 2<br>LINE 3<br> - removing the line breaks and placing a <br> wherever you would like the line to break. If this doesn't make sense, please contact me for more info: https://forum.literotica.com/conversations/add?to=Laurel

which I understand as what @Plathfan was suggesting a few posts above. It looks pretty horrid in the submission textbox but hey, if it works...

 

[Arr2]

FWIW, after the insight on this thread, I posted my corrected version, and it was just fixed. HUGE thanks to the mods! And thanks, also, to the insight from @Plathfan that helped me sort it out.

I'm not sure if it's allowed, but if anyone's curious for what the heck I was trying to accomplish, here's the fixed story (Lines of the See-Through Man Pt. 02). (And if such links are not allowed, I apologize; I thought I'd found precedent, but I'm still learning the ropes.)

 

[TheLobster]

FWIW, after the insight on this thread, I posted my corrected version, and it was just fixed. HUGE thanks to the mods! And thanks, also, to the insight from @Plathfan that helped me sort it out.

I'm not sure if it's allowed, but if anyone's curious for what the heck I was trying to accomplish, here's the fixed story (Lines of the See-Through Man Pt. 02). (And if such links are not allowed, I apologize; I thought I'd found precedent, but I'm still learning the ropes.)

You can link to your stories on the forums. Many people, me included, have added links their entire profiles in their signatures, let alone particular works.

 

[Arr2]

You can link to your stories on the forums. Many people, me included, have added links their entire profiles in their signatures, let alone particular works.

That's why I noted it; I found scads of folks linking in their signatures, but a lot fewer people doing in the main bodies. ("You fool! You've violated the sacred-yet-unwritten rule about in-body links!") Hence my disclaimer.