Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Carriage returns in fanfic?

I've been wondering whether to use hard carriage returns when initially writing stories before they are copied to these posts. The FAQs only say to use plain text, but don't specify hard vs. soft CR/LF's.

Thanks.

I *think* I know what you're asking, but if I'm way off base hopefully someone else will hop in and answer your real question.

I'm thinking you are asking whether to format stories like this:

"I didn't know you liked this song," she said softly, her fingers running through the curls at the nape of his neck.

"I've never heard this song in my life," he replied softly. "I just wanted to dance with you."

Lois sighed and relaxed against him, laying her head on his chest.

He loved this. The feel of her in his arms. The way she relaxed so totally when they danced together. There was no way he could pass up an opportunity like this. He moved his hand in small circles on her back.


Or like this:
"I didn't know you liked this song," she said softly, her fingers running through the curls at the nape of his neck.
"I've never heard this song in my life," he replied softly. "I just wanted to dance with you."
Lois sighed and relaxed against him, laying her head on his chest.
He loved this. The feel of her in his arms. The way she relaxed so totally when they danced together. There was no way he could pass up an opportunity like this. He moved his hand in small circles on her back.


If so, the answer is the first one. It makes it much easier to read both on the boards when you are posting, and once it goes to the archives.

Hope that helps

Annie

Edit: In posting this, I've discovered that indentations don't show up in posts. So, as you can see, that makes it even harder to read.

Thanks for the reply. It's not quite the question I was asking, but it does answer another question I had.

The question I was asking came from trying to write stories in Notepad on my Windows machine. Since the FAQ's (here and for archive) require us to post things in plain text, I figured I'd use Notepad rather than some fancier word processor.

But with Notepad, a line goes on forever with no implicit/soft carriage returns. I have to use a hard CR after every single line in order to prevent that from happening.

But that leads to the question of transferring that text to a post here on the message boards. Do I need to remove the hard CR's in order to post here, or do I keep them in? In other words, do I rely on implicit line wrapping or must I supply my own?

Thanks again Annie.

Hi!

In Notepad, you can go to Edit: Word Wrap and that should create the soft returns so that the line doesn't run off into infinity.

I usually write in Word and then copy and paste the story onto the message board. Then later I copy it into Notepad before sending it to the archive.

Hope that helps.

~Anna

Ah ha! Okay, at least I was close.

Anyway, I'm with Anna. I normally write in MS Wod because that is what I'm most comfortable with. When I'm ready to send it to the archives, I just "save as" as a txt file. But if you're going to write in Notepad, use word wrap. It's much easier on you than making the hard returns. I remember learning about word wrap and being very excited. <G>

Annie

ME, the boards have automatic word wrap, so don't use any artificial hard returns; ie if you're saving in plain text, don't do it as text with hard returns. The same goes for sending a story to the archive; those hard-pressed GEs, or more likely our overworked Editor-in-Chief, will have to go through the story to take out all the hard returns.

I write in Word, and just copy and paste to the boards, and that seems to work just fine. For sending a story to the archive, I then do a 'save as' into plain text, and that's it. It doesn't matter what font you use in Word, incidentally, because the UBB software converts it all into Verdana. Likewise, formatting such as bold and italics does not carry across onto the boards; you need to use the UBB code or else the handy formatting buttons located below the posting window.

The FAQ isn't complete, by the way; we are working on it (or rather, Meredith is ) but we haven't had time to get it all complete and uploaded yet. As such, any suggestions for items which are missing - and this post is an example of that! - are very welcome.


Wendy
Boards Administrator

Does anyone know of a way to reformat an entire document to take out hard returns? I copy stories from the archive and paste them in Word but they end up looking like this:

Then, I spend a lot of time (time taken away from reading) fixing it to look like this:

So, I was hoping someone knew of a way to fix the entire story with one press of a button...

I recently found a way to do that, Anne. So let's see if I can explain it coherently.

Okay, when you copy a text from the archive onto a WORD file, here's the type of thing you get:

In WORD, go to "tools" / "options", and go to the part where you can change the kind of thing showing on your file (sorry, I'm translating from a French-speaking OS here). Tick the box to let you see the hard returns.

The hard returns should now appear as a strange-looking symbol. Sorry, I can't show it to you here because it doesn't work anywhere but on WORD.

All right, now go to "edition" / "search" and select the part of "search" that lets you replace things. In the "search" line, type ^p^p and in the "replace" line, type something that is unlikely to be found anywhere on the story, such as @@@. Click on "replace all".

Here's how the story looks like now:

As you can see, the annoying hard returns are still there. Now you're going to take care of them. Go back to search/replace. In the "search" line, type ^p and in the "replace" line, don't type anything. Click on "replace all".

Now in search/replace again, type @@@ in search and ^p^p in replace. Then go back to "tools" / "options" to untick the showing of hard returns.

And here you go:

Hope this helps!

Kaethel

That's strange, Anne, because any hard returns should have been removed long before it gets to the stage of being uploaded to the Archive.

Have you tried simply saving the file instead and then using WORD to read it, rather than cutting and pasting?

LabRat

Whenever I copy from the archive to word I get one HUGE Paragraph.... try reading Caped Fear that way!

So yes, is MUCH easier to save as a txt file and then open with word...or even save as a web page.

-Breanna

I'm not sure what you mean by saving the file.

Basically, I started doing this in order to print the stories so I could read them while my hubby was hogging our only computer. Now, I save them in Word and download them to my PDA. When I tried to just print them directly from the archive, I got that same weird formatting. So I copied and pasted into Word but then I lost all the paragraphs. So, now I copy and paste into an email at my yahoo account and send it to my office account. Then I copy it from email and paste it to Word here and you saw what I get. On real short stories, it's no big deal, but I'd really like to read some of these bigger stories I keep hearing about...like Masques.

Please !!

So...you've tried opening the story file on the Archive, hitting file, hitting save as, and saving the file to a convient folder on your hd? Then opening it in WORD to read? And you had the same problem with broken paragraphs using that method, rather than cutting and pasting the text?

I'm not sure that Kaethel's solution will work because I'm suspicious it's the same problem. As I say any stories submitted which exhibit broken paragraphs should have been fixed using Kaethel's method before they hit the Archive. Now, one or two I can see slipping through, but you seem to be having the problem with every file.

Let me know if it does work?


LabRat

Rat, I do have that problem with every file, but I might be doing something wrong. I save as .txt, then open the file, then cut and paste into WORD, and that's how it shows hard returns on every line.

Kaethel

Well, Kaethel's already explained my search&replace trick... what with one thing and another, I used to have to deal with that formatting problem a *lot.* So I created a macro in Word, and put a button for it into my toolbar. At this point, I have no idea how I did that, but I wanted to point out that it's possible. Certainly been very handy for me.

PJ

Ah - it's the cutting and pasting into Word which preserves the hard returns. Because .txt in Notepad imposes its own hard returns, unless you open the file in Word you won't get rid of them.

So save the file, then open it in Word. Then select all and change into whichever font you find easiest for reading.


Wendy

Ah, this is a subject close to my heart!

I do what Kaethel described, using a marcro like Pam. (If someone wants help either email me, or post a msg and I can either reply privately or on the mbs if there's a lot of people.)

Wendy suggested that the hard returns were occuring at the end if every line because of copy & paste. However, I save Archive fic as .txt, then open in word and I still get the hard returns at the end of every line. I use my macros to get rid of them so that the text goes from margin to margin, ie word wrap. And its every fic from the Archive, at least all the ones I've downloaded so far. (The only difference I've found is that some fic have a space and a hard return at the end of every line and the others have no space, only a hard return. Means you have to make two different Marcos.) I don't think its just my computer becuse I use my home computer and the Uni computers.

Rat said,
In essence, yeah, this is what happens to me. Tho my problem is more that the hard returns occur long before the line reaches the margin, which means that the story would be printed off using way more pages than nesscessary, and not that the story is 'too wide' for my page, ie broken paragraphs.

From Kaethel,
I usually describe it as a backwards P with a double verticle line instead of a single line and on every version of Word I've used so far there's a shortcut button the 'Standard' toolbar that lets you show all hidden characters. It looks like a hard return - the backwards P, and I usually find it beside the 'zoom' box (the one that lets you set the percentage size of your page.


Breanna, this usually only happens to me when I open them in notepad, which is the default for .txt on my computer. With larger files it says something like 'The file is too big for Notepad. Do you want to open in Wordpad?' However, for shorter fics, if you go to word pad and open the file from there, it doesn't give you one great big paragraph.

Hope this helps! And if this has made absolutely no sense, someone please tell me and I'll try again!

Loriel

Gosh,
I do it a little differently, and have never had a problem with the formatting.

What I do is: I copy and paste the story into wordpad, reassign a different font, and then "save as" on my harddrive. I then open it to read in Word. I have never had any problems with any stories from the archives. This doesn't work well with "anniesplace" however, there I get the broken lines and hard carriage returns. I have never run into a story that was too big to copy and paste into wordpad.

Hope this helps or maybe I'm just lucky.

S

Woohoo! Kaethel's explanation works! My file for NWH looks very okay now and quite a bit less pages to read.

I'm still playing with the copy and paste thing to not have to do all that work. But I'm glad there's now a way I can solve it.

Saskia

I actually have a macro to do that automatically, thanks to our wonderful Archive webmistress, Lauren.

It belatedly occurred to me that Lauren set up a couple of tutorials for me that might be of help here. I've no idea if they'll work but anyone with the problem could give them a try. At the very least it has graphics which illustrate the search and replace solution which Kaethal and I use to sort out broken paragraphs.

Formatting for the Archive

Making Archive Text Editable Using Word

And this one has step by step instructions for setting up a macro that will do the process for you with the tap of a couple of buttons:

Inserting a Macro into Word

Hope these prove useful.

LabRat

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has cleared all this up. When my computer crashed a couple months ago, I lost all my files. I downloaded them all from the archive, but thought I'd never get them back in Word format ever again. Now I've got them back, and I learned about making macros.

Thanks!

Annie

Yea! It worked!! It still leaves half-sized lines when it's in the Word document, but for the PDA, that doesn't matter. I just have to fight that urge to fix those.

Thanx!!!

This is the paragraph sign:
Wow, all this hard work that I never have to do. Hard returns very rarely happen when I'm downloading from the Archive. My process:
1. Open story from Archive (wonderfully fast software you have there, folks)
2. Open blank Word 6.0 file.
3. In Archive, control A (select all), control C (copy)
4. Move cursor to open word file
5. Control V (paste)
And it's all there, wrapped correctly and I read it in Verdana.
To translate to my PDA, I use Pocket Word.
Guess I'm lucky.

Artemis

Anne, glad that worked for you. I don't use a PDA, but you might want to try the macro for fixing those broken paragraphs and see if it does the trick on your PDA just as it does in WORD.

LabRat