Formatting style

[MelanieShaman]

Okay, so I have a spark of an idea I want to explore, but before I get too deep, I'm curious about a couple of things in formatting, if that's the right term.

I'm thinking of writing a cyberpunk story and I have a thought that whenever a character "reads" something in a display of text comes up on a cybernetic eye or HUD it would be displayed as such.

<<system reboot in progress>>

And when people communicate through internal cyberware (think cell phone in your skull), it would look like this.

[[Meet me at Club Chaos at 10]]

Would that be okay? Or annoying? I plan on putting notations for this at the beginning of the story (and any subsequent chapters of they happen).

 

[Altissimus]

I think it would be fine. I did something similar in a recent story to distinguish between text conversations and normal speech. So long as you're consistent you can pretty much do what you want. I wouldn't even bother to explain it at the beginning of the story in notations, simply make the context clear the first, second, and fourth times you use it in the story, then just assume the reader has got the idea by then and carry on as you want thereafter.

 

[Bamagan]

If you ask a group of people if something is annoying, it's very surprising to not get a yes from someone.
But on the balance I don't think most people will care much (edit- if you do as you intended. So go for it).

 

[onehitwanda]

honestly, consistency is the most important thing. If you pick this scheme, stick to it religiously for the work. And don't add too many different styles.

 

[Rustyoznail]

This ^^^^

Stick to a plan, and it'll be fine.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Thanks yall...

 

[StillStunned]

However you do it, be clear about what the various types of speech are.

Do you know the short story "The Faithful Soldier, Prompted", by Saladin Ahmed? It's a wonderful tale, but the prompts are shown in italics, just like the POV character's thoughts. Some other formatting choice would have been appreciated.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Be careful using << >> . You might inadvertently end up with false html - which happened to me, in two stories, where I used it to designate texts. Problem was, I lost the words in between, and had to submit an edit to fix it.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Okay, so I have a spark of an idea I want to explore, but before I get too deep, I'm curious about a couple of things in formatting, if that's the right term.

I'm thinking of writing a cyberpunk story and I have a thought that whenever a character "reads" something in a display of text comes up on a cybernetic eye or HUD it would be displayed as such.

<<system reboot in progress>>

And when people communicate through internal cyberware (think cell phone in your skull), it would look like this.

[[Meet me at Club Chaos at 10]]

Would that be okay? Or annoying? I plan on putting notations for this at the beginning of the story (and any subsequent chapters of they happen).

As @electricblue66 says, angle brackets can be complicated. You can use “Spanish quotation marks” instead «like this».

Em

 

[SimonDoom]

I think it can work. The two main requirements for any formatting scheme are 1) clarity and 2) consistency. As long as you satisfy those two requirements, you're probably going to be fine.

Which is not to say you won't get the occasional comment from someone who hates your formatting.

Put it in the preview pane before you hit "submit."

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I don't see a big deal with it. The HUD messages could simply be in all caps. I like Emily's idea of the spanish quotation marks, or you could use use underscores to be on the safe side- which would look more like a HUD message with just one at the end, like many android/cyborg/robot POVs usually show a blinking underscore as messages appear on their HUD, like a PCs command prompt window does.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

If you want to use << and >> you'll need to type them into the Lit plain text entry field as &lt; and &gt; to prevent it from being parsed as HTML. E.g.,

&lt;&lt;Turn left in 15 meters.&gt;&gt;

Square brackets are fine, though.

 

[Duleigh]

Okay, so I have a spark of an idea I want to explore, but before I get too deep, I'm curious about a couple of things in formatting, if that's the right term.

I'm thinking of writing a cyberpunk story and I have a thought that whenever a character "reads" something in a display of text comes up on a cybernetic eye or HUD it would be displayed as such.

<<system reboot in progress>>

And when people communicate through internal cyberware (think cell phone in your skull), it would look like this.

[[Meet me at Club Chaos at 10]]

Would that be okay? Or annoying? I plan on putting notations for this at the beginning of the story (and any subsequent chapters of they happen).

It works fine. Since there's no ability to change the font and there's limited available options to change the existing font we do what we can. This works nicely. Good job!

 

[BobbyLaker]

Okay, so I have a spark of an idea I want to explore, but before I get too deep, I'm curious about a couple of things in formatting, if that's the right term.

I'm thinking of writing a cyberpunk story and I have a thought that whenever a character "reads" something in a display of text comes up on a cybernetic eye or HUD it would be displayed as such.

<<system reboot in progress>>

And when people communicate through internal cyberware (think cell phone in your skull), it would look like this.

[[Meet me at Club Chaos at 10]]

Would that be okay? Or annoying? I plan on putting notations for this at the beginning of the story (and any subsequent chapters of they happen).

I agree with others here that consistency is the key.

Having said that, I like the <<waffle_1>> but not the [[waffle_2]] - might a single '[' be better?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Wow, @MelanieShaman, I've kicking around an idea for a story set in a simulated world. You've given me my opening and closing, SYSTEM REBOOT, and perhaps I can use the term in a few scene changes as well. But now it feels like some kind of theft. Buggers.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

But now it feels like some kind of theft.

Not OP but I would strongly resist any claim that anyone has exclusive rights to the idea of using different delimiters for different kinds of quotation.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Thanks, it was a half-hearted joke. But also a little angst about borrowing the idea. I know it's not stealing, but doesn't feel so clean as having thought of it without the inspiration.

Not OP but I would strongly resist any claim that anyone has exclusive rights to the idea of using different delimiters for different kinds of quotation.

 

[MelanieShaman]

Wow, @MelanieShaman, I've kicking around an idea for a story set in a simulated world. You've given me my opening and closing, SYSTEM REBOOT, and perhaps I can use the term in a few scene changes as well. But now it feels like some kind of theft. Buggers.

Naw, do yo thing chicken wing. Lol

 

[alohadave]

I agree with others here that consistency is the key.

Having said that, I like the <<waffle_1>> but not the [[waffle_2]] - might a single '[' be better?

Note that angle brackets will likely not render when displayed as a webpage. <> are used to enclose HTML markup commands, and are not displayed normally.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't think we can have alternate colors in the story either, can we Dave?

Note that angle brackets will likely not render when displayed as a webpage. <> are used to enclose HTML markup commands, and are not displayed normally.

 

[alohadave]

I don't think we can have alternate colors in the story either, can we Dave?

Not officially, but if Laurel lets it through, using a valid HTML tag should/might work.

 

[Devinter]

If you want to use << and >> you'll need to type them into the Lit plain text entry field as &lt; and &gt; to prevent it from being parsed as HTML. E.g.,

&lt;&lt;Turn left in 15 meters.&gt;&gt;

Square brackets are fine, though.

I did this when I was new to the site and Laurel still rejected the story because using any sort of HTML stuff was "not allowed". What was strange was that this was in Part 3 of an on-going story and I had done the same thing for Parts 1 and 2, which went through. So it can be a bit of a hit and miss. I think I would avoid all HTML symbols just to be on the safe side. Use alternative symbols that look similar instead.

 

[MelanieShaman]

What about 《This》?

 

[alohadave]

What about 《This》?

That's the French quotation mark. You might confuse someone in France, but many Americans have never seen that.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sacrebleu!

That's the French quotation mark. You might confuse someone in France, but many Americans have never seen that.