Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls How do you read fics?

I read everything on the screen. I have some notebooks where I print out the very best fics for others to read--but that is for other fandoms (Lord of the Rings--I printed out some of the very best fanfic, which is GOOD--and Valdemar and Tortall fic), haven't gotten to L&C yet. I don't know if I want to tackle it! I have enough good fic to last several notebooks, at least. And Masques would take a notebook up all to itself , 'cause I have to have at least 8 point font--and even that is tiny; some people would have to use a magnifying glass to comfortably read it.

I'd print more than I do, but I have to format it all the way I want first--I do it in Word, 8 pt font, and have to fix the formatting--a lot of text from txt files runs together in many places when copied into Word, and takes ages to fix.

Someday I want to learn how to bind my own book. Then I'll print out all of Masques and bind it, so I can lend it to my friends to read.

LOL, Doranwen

Funnily enough, there was one FoLC who did just that! Printed Masques out in the smallest font possible to save on paper - and then used a magnifying glass to read it. <g>

What a sweet compliment.

LabRat

Does it ever! But years ago I came up with a macro to fix 'em, so now all I do is hit a button on my tool bar and the whole thing gets fixed. It's a 3-step search & replace.

• Search for the double hard returns (^P^P) and replace them with XXXX or any other place-holder combo.
• Replace all the remaining hard returns (^P) with a space.
• Replace all the XXXX's with double hard returns.

That gets rid of the hard returns within paragraphs, but keeps the paragraphs separate. Assuming it started off with double spaces between paras -- you can adjust if it's something different, like a hard return followed by 5 spaces for indented paragraphs.

There are still a few things to tidy up, but it's a lot easier this way.

I guess I could go with 8 pt. At the moment I'm using 10pt Arial, going down to 9pt for a longer story, but I could probably read 8pt. I never used to print out fic, but lately I like having it available when I can't get near my computer.

Hope this helps!

PJ

Ditto. They're are several really excellent stories out there, but because they don't use that extra return button, I just can't read 'em anymore.

My screen and I stick to each other like glue, which isn't such a great thing, according to my optometrist, but until I have a pair of frames on my face, I'll stick to the screen.

JD

It hasn't been said yet (I think):

One word at a time!


David (Who reads said words on screen)

I selected "other". I don't read oncscreen because I have a vision problem, so I print out everything I read. Earlier on, I collected the stories I like, but have stopped doing that because I ran out of room to store them.

I don't print anything to read until it goes to annesplace or the Archive. I only want to read stories when they are finished and in their final version.

I don't like to read stories in pieces, but I'm glad other people do, because when I write, I post, and the comments help me complete the final version before I send it to annesplace and the Archive.

Jude