Topic: Format

Please forgive me if  the answer if right in front of my eyes,  but I can't find it!  I published a short story,
my first one.  Usually I have only posted poems,  so I didn't run into this problem.  While my story lines
look fine on my computer,  and fine in the editor,  now that it's posted,  the formatting is crazy.  It seems
that the last line of a sentence will go to the next line,  and that is the only word there.  What am I doing wrong????
I cut and pasted onto the editor from my laptop.  Is that the problem? 
Any advice will be appreciated.    Thanks,

Janet

Quote Post 1

Re: Format

Hi Janet,

What word processor did you paste the story from?

Sol

Quote Post 2

Re: Format

I don't have Word on my laptop,  so I typed the story into Notepad,  and pasted it from there.  It looks good on Editor,  but it's wacky on the actual site. 
Thank you so much for replying.  smile

Quote Post 3

Re: Format

It's because you put line breaks into Notepad. Those line breaks are translated into line breaks on the site.

To fix it, you need to go into Notepad  and make each paragraph a single line. Once you do that, you can paste it back onto the site and it will correct.

If you have Works on your computer that might help. You can paste it into that and it should help make the corrections easier.

Sol

Quote Post 4

Re: Format

Thank you so much Sol,  yes,  I do have line breaks in my Notepad.  I'll  go in and change it, and see how I do with it then.  I don't have Works either.  My poor computer is so pathetic.
Thanks again for your help.

Janet

Quote Post 5

Re: Format

You might want to try Google Docs. They offer a pretty good word processor for free. Just Google "Google Docs."

Quote Post 6

Re: Format

ok thanks,  I promise I will stop bugging you now.  smile

Quote Post 7

8 Reply by Tom Oldman (edited by Tom Oldman 2015-04-29 21:12:24)

Re: Format

Janet:

You can get a wonderful, Windows-friendly, word processor suite with a spreadsheet, Database, Writer, Drawing, and other goodies completely FREE. It is called Open Office.. The URL is: https://www.openoffice.org/

I use it all the time when I am on my Linux machine, but from time to time I'm on my laptop or other desktop that doesn't have MS Word on it.

Their Writer will read/write MS Word-compatible files (.DOC, .RTF) or you can Copy/Paste directly into the editing windows on this site from it.

Did I mention it was free?

~Tom

Quote Post 8

Re: Format

Both Google Docs and Open Office include very good word processors, but I found that they require some manual reformatting if you want to eventually move the files to MS Word, which an editor/publisher would almost certainly require. Apparently, they don't save in exactly the same format that Word uses. No surprise, really, since they're complex files. In my case, I used only a few simple styles, but still couldn't get it to come across cleanly into Word. It wasn't a huge task but then I had only completed half of my first draft.

I don't know if Open Office has track changes and inline comments like Word, but they are invaluable eventually. I now use inline comments to flag stuff I want to revisit later, rather than interrupting my work to do immediate fixes. I use track changes to go back and forth with my editor. The last time I used Google Docs (about two years ago), it didn't have track changes or comments.

Dirk

Quote Post 9

Re: Format

Dear Tom and Dirk,
Thank you so much for all of your suggestions about formatting my story.  I am going to go to google docs, and to open office and see what I can comprehend.  As I don't expect that any publishers are going to want what I write, (rats) I will just be happy to have it look normal on TNBW.
Thanks again,
Janet

Quote Post 10

11 Reply by njc

Re: Format

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Both Google Docs and Open Office include very good word processors, but I found that they require some manual reformatting if you want to eventually move the files to MS Word, which an editor/publisher would almost certainly require. Apparently, they don't save in exactly the same format that Word uses. No surprise, really, since they're complex files. In my case, I used only a few simple styles, but still couldn't get it to come across cleanly into Word. It wasn't a huge task but then I had only completed half of my first draft.
Dirk

There are internal inconsistancies in the MS file formats.  If you try to use two different sets of controls on the formatting, you can get very unexpected and unreasonable results.

This, by the way, is why many people in the Open Source community believe that Penfield Jackson was right and Kotter-Kelly was wrong.  The MS file formats are not as precisely defined as a standardized programming language, and are effectively defined only by the MS proprietary programs that write and read them.  (The new C++ standard will be over 1300 pages and, in spite of 100,000s of hours of work, will surely have a few hundred holes.  It's hard to cover all the cases.  Look up 'Koenig Name Lookup'.)

Quote Post 11

Re: Format

Hi guys,
arrrrrrrggggghhhhh.  I am not a good format person!  I tried to correct my short story The Mirror, and I succeeded in having to delete it because I messed it up so badly.
I will try again, because I still have it on my laptop,  but on this site it was so horrendously awful, I couldn't even get edit to work.
Therefore,  I am back to square one,  but I have two things to say.  I suck at posting longer stories, and I am going to stick to poems!  Thanks for trying to help me.
Janet

Quote Post 12