what happened to my apostrophes?

[Callia]

Another editing issue...

Two of the four stories I submitted were approved and posted (at last!) but when I went to read them, I saw that most of my apostrophes and quotation marks had disappeared! When I copied (from Word) and pasted the stories into the submission form they showed up as some weird symbol so I went over the texts and changed them. Should I have left the text as was? Also the tab key didn't seem to work in the submissions form and there were lots of exclamation points that weren't in my original version.

Could someone please tell me how to submit the text so that they are correctly punctuated? This is one of my pet peeves and it's frustrating to see my stories are all messed up punctuation-wise.

Is there a way to go back and correct a text after it's been posted?

The Dance They Knew

Fireworks on the Beach


I would love feedback as this is my first time posting stories!

 

[Justin_Thyme]

Altered punctuation

I certainly don't know much about why computers do the things they do but know I had much the same problem with the first few stories I tried to post. I was composing with Word Perfect 8. Tried Word 2000 with some of the same problems. My most recent posts were written using the Word 2000 and then converted to .txt format just before posting. That seems to have worked pretty well and, although it is troublesom, I will probably continue since it seems to work!
You might try converting to .txt and see what happens.
As for pulling a messed up submission for correction, I guess you will have to wait for someome who knows more of the Lit. system for help with that. But then, you might try Emailing Laurel for help.
JT

 

[Callia]

Thanks JT. I will try that!

 

[Alex De Kok]

The strange case of the lost apostrophes

Callia,

although it isn't directly linked to your apostrophe problem you might care to have a look at my How-To on Bold and Italic. This includes a section on submissions which should help you.

As far as resubmitting stories is concerned, do just that. Submit the story under its original title, but include 'Corrected Version' or 'Edited Version' along with the title. Add a note to Laurel in the notes box on the submission page that you want the corrected version to replace the original and she'll take it from there.

Alex

 

[Callia]

Thanks Alex!

Your instructions were very detailed and I followed them to the letter both for my two posted stories and the two that are pending, using Text Only format. I hope my missing quotation marks and apostrophes turn up so we can close this case!


The Dance They Knew

Fireworks on the Beach

 

[Ulyssa]

Sweet and To The Point Alex.

Not to mention straightforward.

I gave your instructional piece a vote of 5 for clarity and accessibility.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Altered punctuation

I certainly don't know much about why computers do the things they do but know I had much the same problem with the first few stories I tried to post. I was composing with Word Perfect 8. Tried Word 2000 with some of the same problems. My most recent posts were written using the Word 2000 and then converted to .txt format just before posting.

Like Alex, I too have written a How To essay -- mine is about how to check your story before submitting for characters that don't display properly: http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=57781

The reason that quotation marks, apostrophes and ellipses don't display properly is because WordPerfect and MS Word use none standard characters for "smart quotes" and other chracters that don't appear on your keyboard.

If you see quotation marks and apostrophes as "little sixes and nines" -- the open quote mark or apostrophe looks different than the close quote mark -- then you have "Smart Quotes" enabled.

Converting your story to pure text (ASCII or MSDOS text) format will remove smart quotes, and most other "special characters" and all of your italics and bold text formatting. Both MS Word and Worperfect do allow you to turn them off as well if you are bothered by converting stories to text format before submitting.

 

[Pookie]

I use Word 2000 to write my stories. The last thing I do before posting is to do a "Save As" and change the "Save As Type" to "Text Only with Line Breaks". Then I just upload the new text (.txt) file using the submit function. This will keep your quotes and apostrophes.

Saving as "Text Only with Line Breaks" for me helps in other applications as well.

Hope this helps somehow.

 

[Justin_Thyme]

Apostrophes and other strange stuff

Okay WH, I'll bite (and display my ignorance at the same time), Just checked the MS Word 2000 document header and can not, for the life of me, see any way to turn "Smart Quotes" off. Hate to let the world know just how computer illiterate I am but what the H---, I guess many (most?) already know so what's a (very) few more?
Care to let us know how to do it? Turn the feature off, not "IT"; I already know THAT!
JT "IT"

 

[Justin_Thyme]

More Ignorance

My, coloring "IT" bright red worked well, didn't it?
JT

 

[Alex De Kok]

Smart Quotes

Justin,

to turn Smart Quotes on or off in Word 2000 go to

Tools / Autocorrect / Autoformat As You Type

where curly or straight quotes can be selected (among other options)

Alex

 

[KillerMuffin]

It's the word-processor. It throws all sorts of extra junk into your work that the scripts can't read. Sometimes you get funky symbols in there and someone has to go through and manually fix it.


DO NOT USE FORMATTED STYLES. Open a new document, start typing. Don't add any formatting to it at all because these codes mess with the scripts that do not read Word code.

DO NOT use your word processor's time saving devices like auto-indents, auto-spacing between paragraphs, smart quotes, etc. Don't mess with any of the settings, including fonts, tabs, margins, etc.

If you can't get it to work so that it comes out right on the other end--this is technological breakdown--then compose your lit stories in wordpad or notepad. Don't copy and paste into word pad, compose them there. If you copy and paste into word pad you will still have the codes that are screwing you up.

Why? I can C'nP or save to .txt or .rtf in WordPerfect and open it with Word and you will get a bunch of illegible goop. Why? The codes are still in there. This is why I hate editoring or getting editored because the editor can never read my work.

Whatever additional wordprocessor crap that gets stuck into your document has to be manually removed before it'll look right. Saving to .txt is just fine, but it still causes work on the editor's end because she has to format your .txt document to fit into .php. Straight copy'n paste works the best cause the scripts are supposed to do it (providing you don't use extra word processor goop).

I found all of this out because I have the top of the line word processor and it adds tons of goop to the document. This would be great if I was going to print the document. However, when I cut and paste it into the window, it's totally fucked up. I started using default settings and my documents go through the cut and paste process just fine.

You want to use Word's out of the package default settings and nothing else.

SHUTTING OF AUTO-FORMATTING IN WORD

Click Format
Click Auto-Format
Click Options
De-select all in the Apply section.
De-select Smartquotes.
Click Ok
Click Ok
Then start working with your story.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Apostrophes and other strange stuff

Okay WH, I'll bite (and display my ignorance at the same time), Just checked the MS Word 2000 document header and can not, for the life of me, see any way to turn "Smart Quotes" off.

From the Word 97 helpfile:
Change curly quotes to straight quotes and vice versa

Word automatically changes straight quotation marks ( ' or " ) to curly (smart) quotes ( or ) as you type. You may not want curly quotes in some cases ¾ for example, if you're using quotation marks to designate feet and inches. To turn this feature on or off:

1 On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.

Show me

2 Under Replace as you type, select or clear the Straight quotes with smart quotes check box.

Note You can find and replace all instances of single or double curly quotes with straight quotes in your document. To do this, clear the Straight quotes with smart quotes check box on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. On the Edit menu, click Replace. In both the Find what and Replace with boxes, type ' or ", and then click Find Next or Replace All.

To replace all straight quotes with curly quotes, select the Straight quotes with smart quotes check box, and repeat the find and replace procedure.

The detils might be slightly different in Word 2000, but Word 2000 should have a comparable entry in it's help file that can be found by using the find function to search for "smart quotes"

 

[Weird Harold]

I use Word 2000 to write my stories. The last thing I do before posting is to do a "Save As" and change the "Save As Type" to "Text Only with Line Breaks".

Literotica works better if you save as just "Text Only" or "MSDOS Text Only" without the line breaks.

Submitting your story with hard line breaks keeps Lit from being able to adapt to different "view/text size" settings by wrapping the lines to fit the screen.

Another useful function in MS Word and WordPerfect is the ability to "show invisible characters" that lets you see exactly where you have paragraph breaks, manual line breaks, tab characters, extra spaces, or other potential problems that aren't normally visible.

Without having paragraph breaks visible, there isn't any way to tell whether you have you paragraph formatting set to add white space after each paragraph break or have two paragraph breaks to provide a blank line between paragraphs -- Lit expects the latter to properly format your paragraph breaks. HTML can't duplicate the added space after a paragraph break

 

[Justin_Thyme]

Thanks Everyone - I Guess!

Wow! I did have to ask, didn't I? I'm beginning to think there comes a time when we Old Dogs aught (sp?) to quit trying to keep up with technology. Writing is kind of fun but sheesh...

No then, guess I will try to make my submissions as easy to use for Laurel cause it isn't my style to make things difficult for anyone. Perhaps I can learn to use the WP features after all.
JT

 

[tenyari]

Here's an FAQ at ASSTR on converting Word docs to -functional- text for posting to Usenet that is also applicable here:
http://www.asstr.org/files/FAQs_and_Information/Converting_Word_Docs_to_Text_2-1.txt

I've found this to be the most useful advice on the subject.

 

[SlickTony]

IME it's become an increasingly Microsoft world, and when you try to work with WordPerfect, as good an application as it is, things often don't turn out well. I ended up getting MSWord because I was tired of attaching my resume to e-mails and finding out that the recipient had been unable to open my resume.

 

[Weird Harold]

Here's an FAQ at ASSTR on converting Word docs to -functional- text for posting to Usenet that is also applicable here:
http://www.asstr.org/files/FAQs_and_Information/Converting_Word_Docs_to_Text_2-1.txt

I've found this to be the most useful advice on the subject.

Definitely some very good information in that link although it isn't directly applicable to Literotica because it's working on the assumption that pure ASCII files and fixed font are needed.

Literotica doesn't use a "fixed font" or fixed line lengths; it wraps text to 80% of whatever your screen width is set to.

Literotica uses Verdana, (A True-Type proportional font,) if you have it. If you don't have Verdana, then it uses, Arial, Helvetica, or sans-serif, until it finds one you do have.

When converting a file to text for Literotica, use "Save As/ Text Only" and most of the special character problems will be solved whether you are using MS Word, WordPerfect, or most other commonly used programs.

Since Literotica uses a "True Type" font, you can also save as MSDOS text and it will display properly as well because TrueType fonts support MSDOS' "extended ASCII" character definitions.

 

[Callia]

First of all a big thanks to everybody who has posted advice and links on how to address this problem. I went back and saved my stories as .txt. files and resubmitted them, but they were rejected! arrrrrrrrgh! The reson given was that the submission was garbled. I will try again. I have to get it right some time!

Callia

A Spy in the House of Friends

The Dance They Knew

Fireworks on the Beach

The Conductor

I hope the links are working at least!

 

[Weird Harold]

The reson given was that the submission was garbled. I will try again. I have to get it right some time!

When you save a file in text format, open it with NotePad to see if there are any strange characters and check that the paragraph breaks are correct -- Lit expects TWO paragrah breaks between paragraphs (ie a blank line) so it can distinguish between line breaks and paragraph breaks in text files.

If NotePad shows all of each paragraph on one line, don't panic -- you just have linewrap turned off. Literotica will properly format those single lines into proper paragraphs.

 

[wildsweetone]

can a story be submitted and it's pecularities kept if it's been saved as an rtf?

 

[Weird Harold]

can a story be submitted and it's pecularities kept if it's been saved as an rtf?

Depends on what youmean by "peculiarities" -- if you mean strange characters where you thought you put quotation marks, hen those will proably stay strange characters in rtf format. I don't know if RTF has an identifier for quotation marks like HTML does to handle smart quotation marks or not. It would still depend on the word processer youuse and how completely it converts to the RTF standard. MS Word converts documents to RTF in a way that smart quotes are converted to, but other "special characters" aren't converted -- the single character ellipsis, for example.

If you mean Italics and Bold, those are preserved, but submitting an RTF file is more work for Laurel and it will delay posting of your story.

Alex De Kok's how to essay and mine both explain how to use Italics and bold in your stories although mine is directed more to those who have problems with formatting and strange characters in their stories.

 

[wildsweetone]

thank you kind sir for your prompt reply, much appreciated

 

[SlickTony]

How do you get links to your stories into your signature like some of y'all do?

 

[Weird Harold]

How do you get links to your stories into your signature like some of y'all do?

The instructions are in the How To forum