Em dashes - how to handle extended characters?

[Robot_Shark]

How should I handle em dashes in my text? In one of the first stories uploaded, I believe the em dashes (— long dashes, as in between words) showed up in the finished story as short hyphens (-). Subsequently, I tried using the old typewriter technique of double hyphens (--) instead, but it turns out the second hyphen gets stripped! Argh. It bugs me every time I look back at my old stories since it can be very confusing for the reader and I cannot correct these.

I have been intentionally writing my stuff in a plain-text editor on a linux box, in order to avoid weird formatting problems that sometimes occurs with Word or OpenOffice formats, but it turns out it introduces as many issues as it may solve.

 

[NotWise]

Interesting. I hadn't noticed that.

I write in LibreOffice using a very simple paragraph format with a blank line between paragraphs, then when I'm done I save that as a text file. The default is to save it as UTF-8, but it is possible to select different encodings.

My em dashes were converted to hyphens by LibreOffice, not by Literotica.

I don't find the difference to be all that disturbing but since it bothers you, try using a different encoding (Lit offers several). It may be that you will find an encoding that preserves the em.

Edit: On looking closer LibreOffice did not convert the em dashes to hyphens. Gedit displayed them as hyphens because it used a monospaced font. Viewed in Vi the console font displayed an em dash.

 

[LesLumens]

Em dashes produced by some programs don't seem to agree with the text processor. Wordperfect's is one of them.

One way to be absolutely sure it comes out as an em dash is to use the html special character code. It's what I've been doing for years now. Just insert it ( or find/replace it ) everywhere you need an em dash.

Something Something—Darkside

Becomes:

Something Something—Darkside

When you view it in preview, you'll see it render properly, and it comes out the same way in the final posting. The entire bolded portion needs to be in there, including the & and ; They're both part of the character code.

You can see this method in use in virtually every story I post. The spaces before and after in my stories are a personal quirk. If done as I have above, with no leading or trailing space, they will render without spaces as is technically correct.

 

[sr71plt]

I use the em dash character and it works, but I can see that it wouldn't work in some programs. There aren't supposed to be spaces around an em dash, but if I had a program that Lit. would properly pick up the em dashes, I'd be tempted to bracket the resultant hyphen with spaces--here on Lit.

 

[Robot_Shark]

Looking closer to mine and other authors' work, it seems as though the double hyphens get redacted to one character only if there is not a leading and trailing space.

Also, is there any way to correct this (or any other annoying typos) in my published stories?

 

[RejectReality]

The editing process goes like this:

Copy the URL of the story you want to edit. You really only need the ending which represents the title of your story. That's the unique part.

Start a new submission.

Use the same title as the original ( or as much as will fit ) + something such as *EDIT*

In the "Notes" section, say what you're changing. For anything other than changes to story text, it's best to lay everything out right here. Added/changed tags, category change requests, changed description, etc.

Paste the URL I mentioned here, in order to nail down what story you're editing and help eliminate some potential for human error.

In the story text section, if you are actually editing the story text, you need to put the FULL edited text here ( or upload the edited document ) NOT just the parts you edited.

If you're not changing the text, but are instead changing something else, then copy the "Notes" section and paste it here. You need something in this section to complete the form, and that's the best thing when you're not changing the actual text.

Fill in everything else with placeholders. You just need to complete the form.

Click preview, and then submit.

Laurel has said that edits have low priority over new stories, so it will likely take a little longer to post than the current rate new stories go up. That seems to depend upon her workload and available time, though.

Also keep in mind that when the edit is processed ( the new "edited" submission vanishes from your private submissions list ) the changes won't be immediately visible on the public side. It takes between 24-48 hours for the changes to appear, and they may not all appear at once. For example, page 1 may update to the new text, but page 2 may not update until an hour later.

You use the same process to delete a story, except you add something such as *DEL* to the title, and say that you want to delete the submission in the "notes" section.