Story keeps posting with formatting off

[Aruban]

I submit stories as Microsoft Word 2003 files.

Last year I submitted a five-part story called Tunnel of Love that used italics to indicate first-person internal monologue and also flashbacks. It also used boldface to call out chapter titles. All the formatting came out fine when it posted.

Recently I edited the story to correct some typos and make minor improvements. I sent in the edited versions, with "EDITED" in the title. The edited versions posted, replacing the originals. The boldface showed up, but not the italics.

I resubmitted the first story part, with a note gently asking that all italics be preserved. The story part has posted again, but still with no italics. This makes the story imposible to understand, because there's no other indication when the narrative switches from third-person to first-person or from present to past.

Any ideas on how to get the site to fix this, or how better to submit the stories so the formatting will carry over?

 

[Darkniciad]

It's always risky to trust different file formats to play nicely together.

Your best option is to submit either by cut-n-paste or .txt format with the necessary HTML tags manually inserted. That way, you can preview the story before clicking the submit button, confirming all your formatting is as you wish it to be.

Preview doesn't always exactly match final posting, but the only thing I've ever seen go wrong with <b>bold</b> and <i>italics</i> ( just in case you want to go the HTML route and don't know the tags ) is when a section formatted in such a way crosses the boundary between Lit pages, in which case the second half of the section on the new page won't have the formatting.

That is easily overcome by not having formatting encompass more than one paragraph. Lit doesn't divide up paragraphs at the page boundary.

I submit stories as Microsoft Word 2003 files.

Last year I submitted a five-part story called Tunnel of Love that used italics to indicate first-person internal monologue and also flashbacks. It also used boldface to call out chapter titles. All the formatting came out fine when it posted.

Recently I edited the story to correct some typos and make minor improvements. I sent in the edited versions, with "EDITED" in the title. The edited versions posted, replacing the originals. The boldface showed up, but not the italics.

I resubmitted the first story part, with a note gently asking that all italics be preserved. The story part has posted again, but still with no italics. This makes the story imposible to understand, because there's no other indication when the narrative switches from third-person to first-person or from present to past.

Any ideas on how to get the site to fix this, or how better to submit the stories so the formatting will carry over?

 

[sr71plt]

Do you simply cut and paste into the story box with the bold <b></b> and italics <i></i> coded? If not, I don't know why not, because that's simple to do and it works.

 

[Aruban]

No, I just upload the Word file. In the past, it's worked fine. Guess I will switch to the other method and do the coding myself. I suppose I need to start by removing all formatting from the Word file and coverting it to .txt.

Then, in the .txt file, do I insert the coding (e.g., <i>...</i>), copy the whole file to the clipboard, then paste it into the story box on the submission form?

 

[Aruban]

No, I must have that wrong. The submission guidelines say:

All manuscripts must be submitted as via the site scripts as Word files (.doc), text files (.txt) or Rich Text Files (.rtf), or pasted into the submission form. If your story uses bolds ot italics, you will need to submit it as a .doc or .rtf.

Still unclear as to how/where to use the coding.

 

[Darkniciad]

That's the way I go, though others say that directly copy/pasting from the file into the submission box without converting to plain .txt works.

Don't worry about that warning. I've been submitting stories using the HTML tags for bold and italic since the beginning in '06

Here's a section of the file I pasted from ( actually, uploaded. I save the .txt file and make any edits to it if necessary later ) for my most recent story.

<i>This is my entry in the Literotica.Com 2011 Earth Day Contest © Copyright Les Lumens 2011

The final page is just my ending note, so don't let the number of pages scare you away.</I>

♠~~~~~☩~~~~~♠

Twigs and dry leaves crunched underfoot as Glen wandered the trail, his thoughts turned inward. The warmth that permeated the sun-dappled wood prompted him to absently remove his jacket, and the action brought him out of his internal dialogue just long enough to notice something on the breeze.

Taking a deep breath, he filled his lungs with the scent of moist earth and honeysuckle. The flowers wouldn’t bloom for months anywhere else, but here they opened their petals even before the last frost. Winter came to the wood, as it did everywhere else, but here, other forces were at play.

The distraction didn’t last long, though. After running his fingers through his short blond hair, he resumed his walk. The spring semester had proven a little difficult — especially the foreign language requirement — forcing him to concentrate hard on the Spanish course. Now that he finally felt confident in the class, he had time to wonder where he was going with his life again.

As you can see, I also use HTML special character codes, and everything goes through just fine.

No, I just upload the Word file. In the past, it's worked fine. Guess I will switch to the other method and do the coding myself. I suppose I need to start by removing all formatting from the Word file and coverting it to .txt.

Then, in the .txt file, do I insert the coding (e.g., <i>...</i>), copy the whole file to the clipboard, then paste it into the story box on the submission form?

 

[sr71plt]

Document extensions are irrelevant for cut and paste into the text submission box. Again, I can't fathom why folks don't just use the easy button in submissions.

But then, in mainstream publishing, as an editor, I get gussied-up formating of manuscripts from authors all of the time--and it all just has to be stripped out for the manuscript to go into publishing production systems. The author doesn't design the book; the publisher does.

 

[michchick98]

This question gets asked a lot. Refer to the Writers' Resources page: http://www.literotica.com/s/basic-text-formatting-101

Specifically these articles:

Basic Text Formatting 101

and

Bold or Italic?

The second one gets a bit more into detail on how to use HTML coding for your story. Adding the formatting as you write or adding it later then copying and pasting your story into the Story Text field will get your story approved faster in most cases and your formatting will remain intact, except in instances as Dark pointed out.

What I do is change the color of the part of the sentence/paragraph/word I wanted with the coding, then once I finish the story, I find the different colored sentences/paragraphs/words and add the coding accordingly.

 

[Stella_Omega]

No, I just upload the Word file. In the past, it's worked fine. Guess I will switch to the other method and do the coding myself. I suppose I need to start by removing all formatting from the Word file and coverting it to .txt.

Then, in the .txt file, do I insert the coding (e.g., <i>...</i>), copy the whole file to the clipboard, then paste it into the story box on the submission form?

That's exactly right. If you want you can type in the coding stuff before you strip the Word formatting. The typed characters will give the HTML commands.

 

[Weird Harold]

I suppose I need to start by removing all formatting from the Word file and coverting it to .txt.

Actually, you should insert the html codes before removing the formatting in Word. if you strip the formatting first, you can't use "Find-special" (word's find function to find formatting changes) to find the Italics and Bold sections in your document.