All Comments on 'Basic Text Formatting 101'

I'm a web developer myself, so I know HTML pretty well, but I didn't know that Literotica's submission page allowed for HTML tags. I currently submit my stories via Word documents and nine times out of ten, they screw up the formatting. My most recent submission that was approved today is a great case in point. Half of the entire story is centered simply because I chose to center a couple of lines of text. So now, everything on the page after the centered text somehow "magically" got centered as well. I may resubmit it using the HTML method.

Again, thanks for the tip!

I have taken a couple of web classes so I didn't need this as much as other people might. Unfortunately I did notice one minor error: in your combo example you had the closing tags in front of the period but your results showed what would be displayed if they were <b>after</b> the period. (I see that they tags work in the comments area too.) Sorry to criticize your work! No disrespect intended!!

You wrote a good introduction to the art of formatting. Every new writer should read it before submitting!

This information is so useful! It's a neat package containing all you need to know about basic formatting, and I'm certainly going to pin a copy to my wall. Your explanation is particularly helpful because it provides the examples so clearly.

Great job of explaining what is, for many beginners, a "black art." Both Lit's authors and the acquisition editors now officially love you!

(Let's just hope that writers who decide to submit manuscripts to print publications understand that the conventions are very different at book and magazine publishers.)

Great tip and very helpful. Thanks so much!

Now I understand why I always see unedited text with all those damn tags left in. Thank you for a simple and concise tutorial.

One thing worth mentioning with regard to the topic of this essay: most word processors (MS Word, NeoOffice) will allow the writer to do a "Save As", and then select (among other options,) "HTML" file. Then the word processor will do the bulk of the HTML formatting for you! Even easier than doing it by hand.

there's a delicious piece of inadvertent humor. At the end of the piece there are two stories flagged as "Similar Stories". I'm guessing that since you mentioned the color of the fleece a couple of times,the code that decides what other stories are similar focused on that and recommended two interracial stories and not, as you would have expected, additional "how to" submit successfully to Literoica stories.

<p>Apologies in advance, this is me being picky/ranting.

Before I get on to "One quick thing..", closing tags.

It is good form to ensure that a tag is closed before its containing tag is closed,

so &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;

sure&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;u&gt; should

be &lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;

sure

&lt;/u&gt; &lt;

/i&gt; &lt;/b&gt;. <br>

Why? Most but not all web-browsers will correctly handle this situation with these tags, but it is not write and can lead to unexpected behaviour, especially when one moves on to dealing with web-pages in general and other tags.<br>

But what if I want the underline to continue? Simple!

&lt;b&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;u&gt;

sure&lt;/u&gt;

&lt;/i&gt;

&lt;/b&gt;

&lt;u&gt; to go&lt;/u&gt;.</p>

<p>And now to "One quick thing.."<br>

Please, please please do not use the export to html option in word. it produces verbose, excessive and ugly html intended to make its output look as much like your document as possible. it isn't suitable for web-pages especially when the result will be plugged into other formatting templates.<br>

Try it, put the words "Hello World!" into word, make them bold and italic and underlined; export the result to html. open the result either in notepad or in a browser and view the source. Its enough to make me cry.</p>

<p>Sorry for the rant, And many many <b>MANY</b> thanks for letting me know that html tags are allowed.</p>

Very helpful, thank you.

this post has been a big help thank you much

And thank you Donalde for pointing me to it.

This is wonderful to know!

Thanks so much for the information. I've been ducking most of the added things. Now I can start doing more. Thanks again carvohi

I've submitted two stories in rtf. This helps quite a bit in getting the story set up properly quickly and easily.

Do strike throughs and the other html formats also work?

That submitting in html will go faster. I'm already familiar with it, but I'm sure this will help a lot of people.

I always submit my stories by uploading an .rtf formatted file. It takes about four to five days before my story appeared and I often wondered why. Now I know. ;-)

I'll try submitting the last chapter to my Cursed and Coveted via your way, just to try things out. I'm so used to saving my work in .rtf and then uploading to Lit that I never considered doing it the way you've described above.

Thanks again! Five shining stars.

*~Candlelight062~*

I like that this saves moderators time, gets stories uploaded faster, and teaches anyone reading it basic coding, all at the same time. I wasn't aware of the fact that I could straight-up submit code. This'll probably make submissions go faster in the future.

On a bit of a complaint, though, I will point out that it is pretty limited, if only the bold, italic, and underline formattings are allowed. It would be a pretty large pain to indent, or do much of any kind of formatting to the paragraphs, if I couldn't use some basic CSS, which I doubt I'd be allowed to do.

I fumbled the start of the <i>cyber revolution<i> and html is still a mystery to me. This story shed a little more light on the subject. I also wanted to see if html commands would work in comments.

It seems not to work.

Great article. Clear explanations, very good and practical demonstrations, and you weren't trying to beat about the head and shoulders those of us who are still ignorant. Good job.

I actually already knew the basics of html formatting, but this was very clearly and concisely summarized for those who don't (until they finish the article).

I was looking for a way to use this kind of formatting on my comments since I absoltuely <i>/love/</i> italics, but it doesn't seem to work. Love should be in italics there (I did put in the <i > tags as well as the slashes).

tl;dr: Well written and concise. Appreciate you taking the time to write this, thank you.

Thanks, much appreciated

You wrote:

<i>NOTE: When using the closing tags, use them in the same order as the 'opening' tags (see my examples above). If you want the formatting before the punctuation, put the closing tags before.</i>

Technically, this is incorrect. Many people would agree with you, because they try in a browser and get the result they expect. Most of the popular browsers compensate for common errors.

A few browsers, especially older ones, will make this text <em>VERY</em> hard to read. Tags are never supposed to overlap. A closing tag like &lt;/i&gt; is always supposed to match the most recent opening tag (with exceptions that would only confuse the issue).

Other than that, you explained the basics quite nicely.

Anyone interested in more advanced HTML should look at <a href='http:/w.org'>http:/w3.org</a> .

I'm already familiar with much more complicated HTML but your description is very simply written and easy to understand. I concur with another comment about the strict order of tag closing though, newer browsers do compensate for this, as long as the tags are closed but it's probably a good rule to follow. I tend to close in order because it's a habit, but like smoking it can't ruin my health.

I'm not a writer, but I appreciate your article. I have considered volunteering as an editor, so I've wondered how to handle the formatting, especially as I favor writing in rtf files.

Barry

This is exactly what I came looking for today!!!!

~bfg~

Thank you so much for this. I'm a new author and someone that doesn't like giving people extra work, so I'm really glad you taught me how to format my stories on my own.

Peace!

It's always a great resource to have this available...now will I use it in my own stories?

Super helpful. Thanks!

I ran into this earlier today by accident. I was very hopeful. I was in IT for years and am pretty well versed in HTML. But I ran into problems with Lists. A straight list

<OL>

<LI> one on one </LI>

<LI>Threesome</LI>

<LI> Gang Bang</LI>

</OL>

worked fine. But nested lists

<OL>

<LI> one on one </LI>

<LI>Threesome</LI>

<OL>

<LI> MMF</LI>

<LI>FFM<LI>

</OL>

<LI> Gang Bang</LI>

</OL>

Created the sub list, but did not add any indentation for the sub list. Any thoughts?

<b>big penis</b>

I just wanted to see if it worked

<b> did it work </b>