[Viv]

I've noticed quite a few stories posted lately with all kinds of wonky line breaks and lack of paragraph markers (no indent, no extra line, no nuthin). These things are so hard to read. Now, I know that formatting is the responsibility of the author, but maybe the site (i.e., you nice folks that do all the upkeep) could add some very basic html instructions (like, use <P> tags! take out <br> tags that appear on every single line!) in the submission instructions?

Thanks for letting me vent.

[BittenBuggy]

Oh I would defiantly appreciate that! I have no idea what any of that stuff means

[Robbie]

The formatting erks me too - and I don't read the stories, I just quickly check for dodgy stuff. I think Do and Scribe have given up trying to tell authors to correct the formatting as all it does it annoy authors and gets nothing fixed (except authors leave and stories don't get posted).

The biggest culprit is when they post with a fixed linebreaks (this is like adding <br>, but most people don't do that on purpose - they just add an [enter].)

<p><br> etc have nothing to do with the problem; in fact, as people read stories plain text, we don't want <p><br> etc built in to the story at all.

What we
do need is for
people to stop posting
stories with
fixed line breaks
except
after a completed paragraph.
Allow the story to roll on to the end of the line, and the story will then wrap with the length of the browser. This should be obvious to anyone who posts a story - and it's not too difficult.

[Viv]

[BittenBuggy]

[KhazarKhum]

If we can get the solid "walls of white" fixed, that will be a HUGE boon! Especially for those who read the fics. Those solid pages of white are blinding!

[NancyBrooke]

I think some of the difficulty stems from however the author posts their fic to the sight: e.g. from e-mail (which imposes line breaks), as an .html file, .rtf file etc. MSWord, ... etc.

I have found when adding a story, if I cut and paste out of MSWord it comes out just fine.

Perhaps the more technically oriented of the administrators might post some suggestions as to what process works best. Of course, the suggestion might not be followed all the time but it might improve story formatting on average.

[Robbie]

[Robbie]

[KhazarKhum]

The "wall of white" is something that shows up in some stories, but not others. There are no line or paragraph breaks--just solid words.

[Robbie]

[Scribe]

We've added a new feature to remove unnecessary line breaks. Any person that does not utliize this will suffer the wrath and utter pain inflicted by Robbie the Programmer Guy who is in a bitchy mood at the time of dictation.

When editing your chapters, use the reformat button. This should fix up your problems. We don't have a solution for the "wall of white'" but if anyone has a solution that can be implemented, please let us know.

[Viv]

[Robbie]

OK folks, we've now added a "Wall of White" reformatter.

Started hunting for a story to test it on, but didn't need to go far. SamwiseTheStrong posted his/her first story only 10 seconds earlier... with only one hit.

One click to fix - saved Samwise's bacon and now no-one has any excuses....