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PLEH!!!
Can anyone explain to me how to post stuff at SSA so that my stories will look less like a baby chimpanzee posted for me? No matter what I do, it always looks wonky and semi-literate and I swear, I can *not* figure out the ital business there. *pout*
And by the way, happy Saturday.
I'm cleaning house, finally putting away Christmas stuff, and dusting--oy, so much dusting.
I did get to watch Avatar and Zuko is breaking my heart, big stupid monkey. *wipes tear* How could he? I knew it would be that way, but how could he? *sniff*
Back to dusting.
*sings* Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home....
And by the way, happy Saturday.
I'm cleaning house, finally putting away Christmas stuff, and dusting--oy, so much dusting.
I did get to watch Avatar and Zuko is breaking my heart, big stupid monkey. *wipes tear* How could he? I knew it would be that way, but how could he? *sniff*
Back to dusting.
*sings* Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home....
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I'm posting the pieces of the FAQ I found helpful"
How Should I Format My Story Before I Upload It?
The Automated Posting Interface is the backbone of this archive. It basically does two things: it converts text files to HTML files (web pages).
However, for the Posting Interface to work correctly, authors need to do a few things first.
1. Save As Text.
When you have finished writing your story, save a copy as a plain text file. Almost every word processor has two ways to save a file: Save, and Save As. If you choose Save As, you will see an option such as "Save as what file type?" or "Type of File" or "Save as Type?" Among your choices will be Text, Text Only, ASCII Dos Text, or something of that nature. Any one of those will usually work.
2. How To Create Emphasis.
Since plain text files do not have any special formatting, you have to use a few special tricks to indicate emphasis. To get the Posting Interface to italicize a word, surround it in *asterisks*. (This only works if there is no punctuation inside the asterisks. "*Lex*!" will be turned into italic text. *"Lex!"* will not.)
Likewise, to underline a word, surround it with _underscores_. The Posting Interface will convert *this* to this and _this_ to this.
3. Scene Breaks
To create a horizontal line-break between sections, hit return, then type a line of asterisks (at least three,) then hit return again. In your text file it will look like this:
***
Unfortunately, it can not deal with accented characters. This causes problems when archiving files that are created on Word. Word tries to be a "helpful" editor. It places accent marks on words that require them, words like naivet�. Unfortunately, the archiving software does not recognize the accented characters and so it drops them.
So in a story, when you describe Clark as being naïve, he ends up being nave when archived, because Word adds an umlaut over the i and the Posting Interface does not understand that. Other words this commonly happens with are cliché, naïvet�, façade and café. If you happen to want to write a sentence where "Clark spouts clichés in order to maintain his façade of being naïve, while ordering from the café" You will instead get a sentence where "Clark spouts clichs in order to maintain his faade of being nave, while ordering from the caf" This will confuse the heck out of your readers.
In order to prevent this, go to the autocorrect portion of Word. There you will find a list of words that will automatically be changed as you type them. Scroll down to the words with the accents, highlight them and then delete them. From then on, you should have no problem with the posting interface. (You also won't get fancy accent marks for anything else you may write.)
Why don't my quotes or apostrophes show up?
Word uses what are called curly quotes or smart quotes. For text to HTML conversion you need to use what are known as straight quotes as the archiving software does not convert curly quotes to straight quotes accurately. Before you save your document as text (http://smallville.slashdom.net/faq-4.htm) , you need to make sure curly quotes are turned off in Word.
To turn this function off go to the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Under Replace as you type, clear the "straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box.
You can find and replace all instances of single or double curly quotes with straight quotes in your document. To do this, clear the "straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box on the AutoFormat As You Type tab. On the Edit menu, click Replace. In both the Find what and Replace with boxes, type ' or ", and then click Find Next or Replace All. To replace all straight quotes with curly quotes, select the "straight quotes" with "smart quotes" check box, and repeat the find and replace procedure.
If you really hate how the story looks after you post it, contact the archivists. They are way cool and will delete the story so you can try again. Not that anything like that. *blinks innocently*
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