I need some help.

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I need some help with how to write a story on here. I keep seeing stuff that just confuses me. I write in MS word if that helps. I have no clue how to copy or paste stuff, and I just want to write a story on here. Can I just write a story in the body section like for a blog? Would that work? People sometimes get ticked if protocols are followed, and I don't really get the submission instructions, I'm still new to the computers now-a-days.

Help me please.

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Editing in Microsoft Word

Puddintane's picture

You can simply highlight the screen and copy, then paste into the story window, with a couple of caveats.

MS Word only inserts a single "carriage return" between paragraphs. Big Closet expects to see two "carriage returns" between paragraphs. I usually call them linefeeds, but this is really only a cultural difference, because they act the same way and mean the same thing.

Linefeeds, or carriage returns, make the white space that separates paragraphs on the Big Closet version of the Web.

The blank line between the previous sentence and this one marks a paragraph and helps the eye distinguish one speaker from the next, or one action from the next.

Microsoft Word, and many other editors, create these spaces automatically, but only visually, so if one cuts and pastes from MS Word into the edit box, the visual spaces disappear and all the text runs together.

Your own note above has two carriage returns between the two paragraphs, for example, which is a great start. The difference in terminology, linefeeds versus carriage returns, is a technical one that exists because these spaces are created in two different ways on different machines.

I use Unix/OS-X as a general rule, which uses ASCII line feeds to mark newlines. Microsoft Windows, and some other systems, use two separate characters, carriage return followed by linefeed, to mark exactly the same thing. The difference is invisible to the naked eye.

In MS Word, and most other editors, you can make "paragraphs" visible with an editor setting that makes the text look like this.¶

This helps to ensure that what you see on the editor screen will correspond to what you want the Big Closet edit box to create on the Web.¶

To make this happen, you'll have to select the Word / Preferences menu item, then look down the list of what you can cause to appear and check Paragraph marks. You might also check Tab characters, because they too behave differently on the Web than they do in Microsoft Word.¶

I'll stop marking paragraphs now, because I'm only inserting them by hand and it's tiresome, but your editor will do it automatically.

You'll want to make your story look like that in MS Word, with two symbols between every paragraph and none at the end of lines inside the paragraph.

If you have carriage returns inside the paragraph, the line will be "ragged" in certain screen settings, which will make your text look unattractive, something like the simulation below.

Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique
senectus et netus et malesuada
fames
ac turpis egestas.
Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae,
ultricies eget, tempor
sit amet, ante. Donec eu libero sit
amet quam egestas semper. Aenean ultricies
mi vitae est.

On the web, no matter how many tabs or spaces one uses, they collapse into one space, and a space at the beginning of a line is discarded, so don't bother trying to indent things. The best way to indent a block quote, for example, as I did above, let's say if you want to include a written note inside the text of your story, is to highlight it in the story box, then click the "Q" button (fifth from the left) in the little icons above the story box.

I hope this is clear. Please let me know if it isn't.

Cheers,

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

Thank you

but so unclear, or at least to my sorry mind. Thanks for the help though but I'm going to take MichelleB up on her offer to e-mail my stories to her to edit and put up.

Bailey Summers

That's the other solution!

Writing in MS Word should minimise spelling and grammatical errors, but passing the story to an editor means they can proof read it and ensure the story actually makes sense before it's released into the wild, in addition to formatting it for correct display on the page.

 


There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...

As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!

There is a difference.

Carriage return (CR) merely moves the cursor to the beginning of a line. Line feed (LF) moves it down to the next line. Not sure what it's like these days but when I was designing hardware to interface with teletypes and similar stuff both commands had to be incorporated, hence the usual term CR-LF. Can't remember what the ASCII characters were/are, the old grey cells seem to self destructing.

Robi

Teletypes

Puddintane's picture

You're absolutely right that teletypes behaved in this manner, but most software designed for modern computers doesn't.

The classic Mac used a single CR character to signify the end of a line. When Macs got the Unix religion, they all went to a single LF to signify the end of a line.

This distinction had been around for a long time, however, in other operating systems.

The Commodore 8-bit machines, the TRS-80, the entire Apple II family, Mac OS up to version 9, and OS-9 all used CR.

Multics and all the Unixes and Unixish operating systems (Linux, BE-OS, Xenix, and a cast of thousands) used LF.

The DEC RT-11, and other OSes developed during the Teletype (TTY) era used CR/LF, because their input and output consoles were usually TTYs. MS-DOS, Windows, and all their descendants, used the same format, because it was a sort of "failsafe," since one way or another the end of line was going to be recognised.

I'll ignore IBM mainframes and EBCDIC entirely, as it seems unlikely that anyone actually reading this note has one of these at home.

Most modern software is smart enough to figure this out, and automatically converts text files (that includes screen copies) from one standard to the others. So if you upload files from one system to another using FTP (File Transfer Protocol), or other copy programme, you can freely ignore the difference because FTP will take care of the conversion for you. It usually translates to CR/LF, but almost all such programmes are tolerant of single LFs as well. E-mail protocols do the same thing, for the most part.

If you perform a screen copy, the bits of the target system's OS that recognise the paste function will do the same.

The only time you'll typically encounter problems is if you carry a file from one system to another in a physical medium, like a USB "thumbdrive" or a disc, or transfer a file in binary mode. In this context, creating stories on Big Closet, you can usually ignore the issue completely.

In most modern operating systems designed to work with Unicode, the recognition of various methods of indicating newlines is automatic, because this recognition is mandated by the Unicode standard, so no translation is necessary.

Cheers,

Puddin'

-

Cheers,

Puddin'

A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style

If i may be so bold

bobbie-c's picture

I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that can give you excellent help and advice.

Nevertheless, here's my two cents' worth (or perhaps it's only one-and-a-half cents now, given our runaway inflation), in the vain hope that it would be some help.

check out http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/16141/topshelf-dumdums

And, if you'd like a copy, please PM me an email address I can send it to.

   
bobbysig-blue.png
To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see Bobbie's "Working Girl" blogs, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To see ALL of Bobbie's blogposts, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c