Character/Word Limit

[Neonurotic]

Anyone know the character/word limit for a story title?

 

[RejectReality]

60 characters, and everything counts as a character, including spaces and apostrophes. Just opened up the submission form and tested it.

 

[Neonurotic]

Tested it. And dammit it doesn't fit. I guess I can use the Description text box for the other half of the title.

 

[RoyceConnors]

Tested it. And dammit it doesn't fit. I guess I can use the Description text box for the other half of the title.

Be careful of titling stories. If it's a multi-chapter story, it's the title that goes in sequence. Change the title in any way and the chapters won't be in order.

 

[Neonurotic]

Be careful of titling stories. If it's a multi-chapter story, it's the title that goes in sequence. Change the title in any way and the chapters won't be in order.

It's just a standalone story so I think it may work.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm wondering if it's a measured length issue or exact characters. If measured length, the cut off would be "around" 60 characters, because the font used is proportional, which means something like a lower-cased "l" and an apostrophe would take up a fraction of the space that a capital "M" would take up.

 

[RoyceConnors]

It's just a standalone story so I think it may work.

No probs then. Descriptions need to reel the reader in, so make it juicy.

 

[RejectReality]

I'm wondering if it's a measured length issue or exact characters. If measured length, the cut off would be "around" 60 characters, because the font used is proportional, which means something like a lower-cased "l" and an apostrophe would take up a fraction of the space that a capital "M" would take up.

I tested it with both lower-case and all caps -- 60 characters either way.

 

[RoyceConnors]

I tested it with both lower-case and all caps -- 60 characters either way.

Let's call it 60 spaces, as spaces count as well.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

But did you test it will all double yous?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Uh, it's 60 characters or a width of 35 W's.

 

[Darkniciad]

No, but when all lower-case and all caps come out the same ( with a couple of underscores thrown in ) that pretty much clinches it. That's far too much variance for the width of the characters to have any bearing.

That doesn't mean that Laurel won't edit it for length if you try to submit a 60 character title in all caps, but you can submit it that way.

 

[TE999]

I had to have the original title of my FAWC2 story attenuated because it wouldn't fit.

 

[sr71plt]

I tested it with both lower-case and all caps -- 60 characters either way.

Thanks.

 

[Weird Harold]

I'm wondering if it's a measured length issue or exact characters. If measured length, the cut off would be "around" 60 characters, because the font used is proportional, which means something like a lower-cased "l" and an apostrophe would take up a fraction of the space that a capital "M" would take up.

Actually, a 60 character limit makes me wonder what they use the other four bytes of a 64-byte standard text input string/long filename for.

 

[sr71plt]

Actually, a 60 character limit makes me wonder what they use the other four bytes of a 64-byte standard text input string/long filename for.

I don't know. But 60 characters was the limit for heads for news agency reports as well, when I was in that business. So, it may be an artificial limit left over from the ASCII message system days. In those days, we used nonproportional fonts, though--each character and space were given exactly the same length.

It's surprising how many presentation "rules" are still set up on the basis of a typewriter rather than a computer.

 

[RoyceConnors]

Uh, it's 60 characters or a width of 35 W's.

Damn, there goes my next story with 36 W's for the title.

 

[RejectReality]

*facepalm*

I was in the description line.

*headdesk*

The title line is 35. The description line is 60, and neither of them care what the characters ( or spaces ) are.

 

[Weird Harold]

It's surprising how many presentation "rules" are still set up on the basis of a typewriter rather than a computer.

I don't know about "presentation rules, but 64-byte strings (60 characters plus a DWord (Long Integer) length indicator) or 128-byte string formats are the result of how information is stored on disk -- specifically how information is stored in file headers and pointers.

Many of the limitations are the result of M$oft's dominance of the market because they are holdovers from DOS and early versions of Winblows.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't know about "presentation rules, but 64-byte strings (60 characters plus a DWord (Long Integer) length indicator) or 128-byte string formats are the result of how information is stored on disk -- specifically how information is stored in file headers and pointers.

Many of the limitations are the result of M$oft's dominance of the market because they are holdovers from DOS and early versions of Winblows.

Yes, precisely, many of the limitations we use now are set by older systems, not because they need to be that way now.

I've encountered this on the macro level. I was working for a government news agency--and was the one in the office responsibility for quality control even though I also was sent on a foreign assignment. While I was gone they bought the message-handling system of the defunct Washington D.C. Evening Star newspaper. They bought it for temporary use while they developed a ground-up system for our own unique needs. To use the system, they had to adapt all sorts of our own needs to what the Evening Star system would do. When I came back from my foreign assignment, I found they were designing the new system to fall in with the temporary procedures of the Evening Star system not on the procedures we wanted to do with our system--or even on some of the desirable capabilities we had before incorporating the Evening Star system. Duh.

That's what a lot of these Web sites are doing. Setting up their systems to accommodate the typewriter and other older systems--when we've been in the computer age for twenty-five years.

 

[Weird Harold]

Yes, precisely, many of the limitations we use now are set by older systems, not because they need to be that way now.

But the limitations imposed by storage don't limit presentation of the information stored. The limitation on "presentation" is imposed by the effort required to program more versatile text handling routines.

To change the way that most modern programming languages handle strings/text would require re-writing the programming languages from scratch instead of building upon existing routines and objects. As long as the programming language has existing string-handling/text handling routines, programmers will be mostly) limited to the input parameters of those strings.

"Standardized" ways of handling different issues isn't all bad; CTRL-F in almost any program will invoke the "Find" function, for example. Almost every program written in any given programming language will use the same library of commands; learning one program written in that language is learning the basics of every program written in that language -- unless somebody paid their programmer extra to change the way some command works.

 

[sr71plt]

I leave it to the programmers to deliver the effect I want/need. I see no need to restrict the headline field to 60 characters--or to be as restrictive with the description field as Literotica is (probably the latter more than the former).

 

[Zeb_Carter]

But the limitations imposed by storage don't limit presentation of the information stored. The limitation on "presentation" is imposed by the effort required to program more versatile text handling routines.

To change the way that most modern programming languages handle strings/text would require re-writing the programming languages from scratch instead of building upon existing routines and objects. As long as the programming language has existing string-handling/text handling routines, programmers will be mostly) limited to the input parameters of those strings.

"Standardized" ways of handling different issues isn't all bad; CTRL-F in almost any program will invoke the "Find" function, for example. Almost every program written in any given programming language will use the same library of commands; learning one program written in that language is learning the basics of every program written in that language -- unless somebody paid their programmer extra to change the way some command works.

And then there's Unicode - UTF8, UTF16, etc. And just try figuring out Japanese, where character come in 4bit bytes and 8bit bytes.

 

[ScouriesWorld]

more darkboy math?

In the past the boss has been limited to only the mid thirties (not the 60 suggested). However, sometimes the QUEEN allows longer titles if you say "pretty please". But then the description is shortened...

 

[TxRad]

^^^^^ Stupid is, as stupid does.

He only reads what he wants to hear. He doesn't read or care that Dark noticed his mistake and corrected it to 35 characters in the title and 60 characters in the description line.

More bullshit by the master of bullshit.