Knowledgebase and FAQ
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Help! I uploaded my story, but my formatting is all mucked up!

Solution
Well, this can be caused by several things.

  1. You used Word to format the HTML. Word does the world's shoddiest job with HTML. No doubt there are bizarre line breaks, styles inserted and tags used that the script running the site does not allow. It is not necessary to use the paragraph <p> tag, on this site. Actually, using it will give you more grief than not. We recommend saving your files as plain text, double checking the spacing and then manually adding any HTML you feel necessary (like italics and bold). Keep in mind that if you don't fix your formatting, you're going to get a note from the Cabal member who sees your fic about it, and then you will have to resubmit - it won't be allowed on the site with the formatting in a mess.

    Also, it's important to note that the script does not allow you to upload a straight Word file (.doc extension) or any kind of text format, though it does allow you to upload .html or .htm. You can paste your story in from a Word window if you use the text box, but you'll still need to add HTML manually for things like italics and any other special characters.


  2. In adding your own HTML you've pressed enter after formatting. People who write code often hit return and put in line breaks after they are done with a section with coding. With HTML and many other Coding languages, the line breaks are ignored. However, since the script that uploads your text reads carriage returns (hitting enter after a line) formatting the coding like this puts in weird line breaks.


  3. You've used the <p> tag. As mentioned above, using the p, or paragraph tag will mess up your spacing. We recommend that you simply copy the text of your story from your text editor (Word, etc) and paste it into the text entry field. This will help to alleviate any bizarreness that can be caused by conversion from one format to another.


  4. Something happened to the line breaks when you saved the file as a txt file. Conversions from one file to another are not infallible. When you use Word you should (or at least I do) see options to insert line breaks or preserve formatting. Deselect these, and you should solve many of your problems.
 
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Article details
Article ID: 15
Category: Formatting Submissions
Date added: 2010-01-07 03:00:32
Views: 348
Rating (Votes): Article rated 4.0/5.0 (4)

 
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