Italic tagging

[Brutal_One]

For my next story chapter I want to make extensive use of blocks of text that should appear in italics. I really want blocks of text so ideally being able to use the , at the start and end of the blocks I want to appear in italics.

This is currently how I have written it but preview does not appear to process the tags.

I assume there is a way to do this.

Advice welcome.

Brutal One

 

[Emirus]

Write it using MS Word and then submit it by attaching it as file. Everything will appear exactly as you’ve written it including the italics.

It’s as simple as that. Don’t bother with all this other complicated shit.

 

[jaF0]

As far as I know, the only way is to use HTML tags <i>text here</i>.

 

[oggbashan]

Edited. Answer given already.

 

[RejectReality]

You might want to consider that large blocks of italics are hard on the eyes. Large blocks of any text on a screen are difficult to follow, but italics are worse.

Aside from that, you need to make sure that every paragraph is enclosed in the italic tags — not just the entire section you want italicized. The reason being that when there's a page break, formatting from the previous page will not carry over to the new one. Lit's page breaks are based upon the number of characters. Once the number of characters is reached, it breaks the page at the last hard return prior to the limit.

So...

<i>Paragraph one of the italicized section.</i>

<i>Paragraph two of the italicized section.</i>

Not...

<i>Paragraph one of the italicized section.

Paragraph two of the italicized section</i>

 

[AlinaX]

Probably best to do each paragraph separately to avoid discontinuities at page breaks.

 

[Brutal_One]

Thanks folks! I think I will try the separate paragraphs route. One mistake was assuming the square brackets [] was the tag identifier not <> tags.

As for blocks there are a few but should still e readable.

The MS tip is good but I do like to use preview to scan the submission.

Brutal One

Edit. Thanks SS. Yes this works well and happy not to give any additional work for anyone. I realised too for some lines I want bold text so the <b> </b> pair. Works in the same way. For this particular chapter it easily makes the distinction between the main narrative and where I want it obvious what the other text is describing.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Thanks folks! I think I will try the separate paragraphs route. One mistake was assuming the square brackets [] was the tag identifier not <> tags.

As for blocks there are a few but should still e readable.

The MS tip is good but I do like to use preview to scan the submission.

Brutal One

When submitting a doc, it takes longer for it to go live, and it is more work for Laurel. Especially a word doc/docx. Word adds a lot of extraeneous data that Laurel has to remove before she can post the story which can mess up your formatting.

IMHO the best way for the author and site owner is to use html tags. You can see them in prevoew and that will help you locate missed tags and make it easier on the site owner to get the story posted faster.

 

[MelissaBaby]

You might want to consider that large blocks of italics are hard on the eyes. Large blocks of any text on a screen are difficult to follow, but italics are worse.

Aside from that, you need to make sure that every paragraph is enclosed in the italic tags — not just the entire section you want italicized. The reason being that when there's a page break, formatting from the previous page will not carry over to the new one. Lit's page breaks are based upon the number of characters. Once the number of characters is reached, it breaks the page at the last hard return prior to the limit.

So...

<i>Paragraph one of the italicized section.</i>

<i>Paragraph two of the italicized section.</i>

Not...

<i>Paragraph one of the italicized section.

Paragraph two of the italicized section</i>

I did not know that, and I have used a fair amount of italics. Thanks for the tip!

 

[jaF0]

Thanks folks! I think I will try the separate paragraphs route. One mistake was assuming the square brackets [] was the tag identifier not <> tags.

The brackets are BBCode (Bulletin Board Code) for discussion boards like this. As I recall, it was developed because the HTML carat tags intended for web pages could be used to exploit forums and aid malicious hackers.

 

[Brutal_One]

The brackets are BBCode (Bulletin Board Code) for discussion boards like this. As I recall, it was developed because the HTML carat tags intended for web pages could be used to exploit forums and aid malicious hackers.

Good to know

 

[ElectricBlue]

Edit. Thanks SS. Yes this works well and happy not to give any additional work for anyone. I realised too for some lines I want bold text so the <b> </b> pair. Works in the same way. For this particular chapter it easily makes the distinction between the main narrative and where I want it obvious what the other text is describing.

This sounds like a smorgasbord, a block fest, of html just waiting to go wrong. All you need is one missed character and the code will go spectacularly wrong. I thought I was clever when someone showed me how to use html, but after several editing disasters, and one story needing to be repaired and resubmitted, I no longer bother except in very small, mistake proof, doses. The effort outweighs the benefit, I reckon.

I'd be asking, why do you need all this signifying? Your text should make the meaning clear. Nuance is in the words, not the package they come in.

 

[LexxRuthless]

I use italics to denote internal dialogue as well as for emphasis, so I use it rather a lot in my stories. Once I've finished writing in Word, I copy and paste the text into the "Story Text" field so that I can give it a final review and see how it will actually look on the website before I submit it. Therefore, the use of those HTML tags is necessary for the way I choose to write.

Fortunately, I found this handy article in the Writer's Resource section shortly after I started writing: https://www.literotica.com/beta/s/bold-or-italic

After a few months, it became second nature to use those HTML tags as I was writing. Only twice have I failed to close a set of italics, and it was obvious as soon as I opened the review page before I summitted the story.

That "final review" prior to submitting a story is extremely handy for spotting errors that have slipped past in earlier edits. I find that the change of font and spacing often makes those appear more obvious, and then I can quickly fix them. I suppose it is a little bit of extra effort, but my readers have commented that they appreciate that extra attention to detail.

 

[Brutal_One]

This sounds like a smorgasbord, a block fest, of html just waiting to go wrong. All you need is one missed character and the code will go spectacularly wrong. I thought I was clever when someone showed me how to use html, but after several editing disasters, and one story needing to be repaired and resubmitted, I no longer bother except in very small, mistake proof, doses. The effort outweighs the benefit, I reckon.

I'd be asking, why do you need all this signifying? Your text should make the meaning clear. Nuance is in the words, not the package they come in.

EB It’s a particular case. In this chapter there is a reference back to a historic event that is ‘triggering’ as a result of a particular artefact that readers of the series should be aware of.

The way I have previewed it, it is very clear for the users to follow and in effect would be easier than trying to ‘sort out’ by trying to follow which parts are which. The use of bold for some of the italicised sections also works again in context of what this is trying to show clearly.

I do appreciate the advice though in terms of trying to keep it simple rather than complicate it but I think the way this work out fits this particular chapter.

Brutal One

 

[jaF0]

EB It’s a particular case. In this chapter there is a reference back to a historic event that is ‘triggering’ as a result of a particular artefact that readers of the series should be aware of.

So, kind of like flashbacks or underlying backstory?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I do appreciate the advice though in terms of trying to keep it simple rather than complicate it but I think the way this work out fits this particular chapter.

Plain text is simple, words are simple. Imagine you had a blind reader, who could only hear the words. How would you navigate such a reader (listener) through this?

My current work in progress has a girl who is vision impaired, so I've been thinking a lot about sensation. How does her sexual world thrive when there's one sense missing? By upping the other senses, obviously. How as a writer do I get that across, when I only have words to describe touch, sensation, scents, the memory of colours? Words without decoration, is how.

 

[Emirus]

When submitting a doc, it takes longer for it to go live, and it is more work for Laurel. Especially a word doc/docx. Word adds a lot of extraeneous data that Laurel has to remove before she can post the story which can mess up your formatting.

IMHO the best way for the author and site owner is to use html tags. You can see them in prevoew and that will help you locate missed tags and make it easier on the site owner to get the story posted faster.

As you will have seen from my previous comment I submit using Word. Although initially, as a newbie, my stories took a few days, mine now go live in 2/3 days. I’m not a prolific writer, only twelve stories in a little over two years but the majority of my stories have gone through in that 2/3 day time period.

So if I’m causing Laurel a problem, which I hope isn’t the case, with all this “extraneous data she has to remove before she can post the story” for some reason it doesn’t affect me. Perhaps I’m lucky and only submitted when there haven’t been many that particular day? If that’s the case I hope it continues.

Also the story which appears has always been exactly as I’ve written it. If only she would strip out the stupid mistakes I’ve made then it would be worth waiting a few dats before publishing.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

As you will have seen from my previous comment I submit using Word. Although initially, as a newbie, my stories took a few days, mine now go live in 2/3 days. I’m not a prolific writer, only twelve stories in a little over two years but the majority of my stories have gone through in that 2/3 day time period.

So if I’m causing Laurel a problem, which I hope isn’t the case, with all this “extraneous data she has to remove before she can post the story” for some reason it doesn’t affect me. Perhaps I’m lucky and only submitted when there haven’t been many that particular day? If that’s the case I hope it continues.

Also the story which appears has always been exactly as I’ve written it. If only she would strip out the stupid mistakes I’ve made then it would be worth waiting a few dats before publishing.

Lex in post 13 included a link. On that page there is a lot of good info. Copied below in the relavant paragraphs...

Literotica allows us to forward documents in forms which preserve these styling traits, but at a cost. The cost is delay, and a lot of the delay is because Laurel has to modify our opus to HTML-format to preserve the styling. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and that is what is basically used to present pages to us via our Web browsers. There are other bells-and-whistles used such as Cascading Style Sheets and various scripting languages (Literotica uses PHP) but at the root of it all is plain old HTML.

We can help Laurel and ourselves by incorporating the relevant HTML tags that we need in a plain text submission which we can paste into the box provided. This saves Laurel work and means our work reaches our readers more quickly.
​

Generally the time to get a story posted was 2-3 days I had one posted same day and the longest wait is 13 days. I uploaded a story on 9/6 and it's going live on 9/7.


Again it's easier for you to type <i>text....</i> a few times then for Laurel to convert an entire wird doc to HTML.

From Tech Republic

When you a Word document as HTML, Word adds page- formatting tags that can make the document very large. These page-formatting tags may also cause content management programs and Web sites to behave unexpectedly.

Microsoft added the special tags to Word's HTML with an eye toward backward compatibility. Microsoft wanted you to be able to save files in HTML complete with all of the tracking, comments, formatting, and other special Word features found in traditional DOC files. If you save a file in HTML and then reload it in Word, theoretically you don't loose anything at all.

Unfortunately, when you then move a standard Word-generated HTML file to a Web site, bad things can sometimes happen. Formatting tags included in the Word file can conflict with settings on a Web server, causing the document to display incorrectly. Additionally, a browser may misinterpret the tags and display the file incorrectly. The HTML file also contains versioning and authoring information that you may not want to have appearing on a Web site.​

 

[Bramblethorn]

Lex in post 13 included a link. On that page there is a lot of good info. Copied below in the relavant paragraphs...

Literotica allows us to forward documents in forms which preserve these styling traits, but at a cost. The cost is delay, and a lot of the delay is because Laurel has to modify our opus to HTML-format to preserve the styling. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and that is what is basically used to present pages to us via our Web browsers. There are other bells-and-whistles used such as Cascading Style Sheets and various scripting languages (Literotica uses PHP) but at the root of it all is plain old HTML.​

The How-To in the link dates to 2002, and the advice there is somewhat out of date. These days, if you want to convert a Word doc to HTML for submission here, you'd be far better off using advanced search-and-replace to automatically tag bold/italic text than to do it manually like that article suggests.

I certainly hope Literotica has automated the conversion process for stories submitted as Word docs/RTF; it pains me to think of Laurel spending thousands of hours manually tagging. That sort of tedium is why computers exist.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

When submitting a doc, it takes longer for it to go live, and it is more work for Laurel. Especially a word doc/docx. Word adds a lot of extraeneous data that Laurel has to remove before she can post the story which can mess up your formatting.

IMHO the best way for the author and site owner is to use html tags. You can see them in prevoew and that will help you locate missed tags and make it easier on the site owner to get the story posted faster.

Not really. She has a program to unscramble the word doc into html text. Actually, you can save the .doc as an .html doc right in word.

 

[Brutal_One]

So, kind of like flashbacks or underlying backstory?

Jaf0 - yes that pretty much precisely. It’s a ‘vision’ as much as anything so having the scene in italics works very well for this purpose.

I often have ‘character thoughts’ but to date this is written in normal text as it is part normally of context around the dialog.

Brutal One

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Can't quote via the 'normal' route, as the thread has been closed, but this has come up quite recently:

I went looking for that thread and couldn't find it thank you.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Not really. She has a program to unscramble the word doc into html text. Actually, you can save the .doc as an .html doc right in word.

Read RubenR's post before yours. It contans a post by laurel from about a month ago where she says...

Hello,

Thanks for writing, and I hope you are well!

If the story has no bolds or italics, the best way to submit is to cut and paste the text into the text field. We assume any file submitted to us as an upload has formatting somewhere in it, and process accordingly. The software we use converts files from .rtf/.doc to HTML, but word processor templates often add weird tags which we must then remove or fix - even if the your story contains no special formatting (bolds or italics). The resulting text must be checked and corrected before posting live. So - if your work contains no special formatting at all, the best way to ensure there are not bugs or issues (and also the way to get your story posted quickly) is C&P.

If your story has formatting, there are two ways to handle this:
Hand code the HTML yourself - that is, add all the <strong> and <em> tags (or <b> and <i>) if you prefer) yourself. The advantage to this is that the story will be more likely to post exactly as you see it on your end. The disadvantages are 1) it's a massive hassle to do this on a long work, and 2) if you miss a closed tag, you could end up with a page full of italics or bolds.
Upload the file as an RTF or DOC with formatting. If you do it this way, then I strongly suggest avoiding Word styles and use only text bolding, italicizing, and centering. Word styles, for example, often add all sorts of HTML tags that cause problems when we convert the file. For this reason, uploaded files take a little longer to process on our side.

All this said - we have no preference as far as submission format. We want to accommodate whatever works for you as best as we can. In the future, we will have a more feature-rich editor which should allow you to write, format, and save long works in your control panel - as well as upload .docs/.rtfs, see how they will be displayed, make corrections, add images or audio from there, and then submit. This will 1) speed up the processing on our end, and 2) help to eliminate formatting goofs.

If you have any other questions, please let us know!

Thanks again, and stay safe and healthy in these crazy times!​

Doesn't sound automated to me.

 

[KeithD]

Jaf0 - yes that pretty much precisely. It’s a ‘vision’ as much as anything so having the scene in italics works very well for this purpose.

I often have ‘character thoughts’ but to date this is written in normal text as it is part normally of context around the dialog.

Brutal One

I think italics are appropriate for "visions" and "flashbacks" as long as they don't get overwhelming. Publishers have combined to decide italics should be avoided, yes, for readability, but they shouldn't have to go away altogether.

Although I personally think italics for "character thoughts" are one of the clearest options for readers, unfortunately, U.S. publishing standards don't currently accept them (that campaign by publishers to get rid of italics). Some publishers are letting them be used, though, and I don't think Literotica readers would be upset if they were used here. U.S. standards are normal font, consistently set either with or without dialogue quotation marks.

 

[RejectReality]

Something I've used in the past ( which still works on legacy stories with the new story pages, but which I've heard conflicting reports about concerning new submissions ) is to set visions/flashbacks off by putting them in <blockquote>

That sets them off a little from each margin, marking them as something special, but it's much easier on the eyes than italics.