Bold or Italic?

Bold or Italic?

Alex de Kok (c) 2002

I suspect most of us submit our creations via our member page. Here we have the option of cutting-and-pasting into the box provided, or forwarding a file which we may have prepared in .txt, .rtf or perhaps .doc format.

Usually, the reason for using some of these formats is that we might have some text styling which we want to use, such as bold or italic. Literotica allows us to forward documents in forms which preserve these styling traits, but at a cost. The cost is delay, and a lot of the delay is because Laurel has to modify our opus to HTML-format to preserve the styling. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and that is what is basically used to present pages to us via our Web browsers. There are other bells-and-whistles used such as Cascading Style Sheets and various scripting languages (Literotica uses PHP) but at the root of it all is plain old HTML.

We can help Laurel and ourselves by incorporating the relevant HTML tags that we need in a plain text submission which we can paste into the box provided. This saves Laurel work and means our work reaches our readers more quickly.

What follows is aimed at users of Windows(r) which I suspect is most of us.

Here's how to do it:

1. Prepare your opus. Edit it, have it proofread or whatever, amend it as necessary until you have exactly what you want.


2. Save it as a plain text file. All of the major word-processing programs offer this facility, or you could write in Windows Notepad which has nothing else! Save the file under a slightly different name from the original. You'll see why in a moment.


3. Now the fun starts, as you need to work through the plain text version of your submission which has now lost all of its fancy bold and italic formatting. Have the original version open as well, to remind you! Now you see why I told you to have both.


4. Wherever you want bold text, precede that text by <B> and follow it with </B> (don't forget the / in the closing tag). The <B> and </B> are called HTML Tags and are used by your browser to control the text you see on screen.


5. Similarly, wherever you want italic text, precede that text by <I> and follow it with </I>.


6. Note that there should be no internal spaces in the bold and italic HTML tags.


7. It is possible to have text which is both bold and italic but remember that the inner tags should be closed before the outer. In other words, <B><I> some text </I></B> will produce some text, but <B><I> some text </B></I> might not.


8. There are other HTML tags which can be used, but are unlikely to be needed in a simple 'Written Word' environment, so I have made no mention of them. Anyone needing fancy formatting is best advised to liaise with Laurel.


9. Now it's time to submit, so open your browser, logon to Literotica, sign-in and go to your member page.


10. From Control Panel, click on Submissions, then on Submit, then on Submit Story or Submit Poem, as relevant. (I'll assume Story, but the process is essentially identical).


11. On the submission page, click on the box to show you agree with the Terms, fill in the Title, Description and Keywords boxes and choose a Category.


12. Open the plain text version of your submission and select the text with Ctrl-A, i.e. hold down the Control (CTRL) key and press the A key.


13. Copy the text to the Clipboard, either from the Edit menu or by using Ctrl-C.


14. Go back to your browser, move the cursor to the submission box and press Ctrl-V (Paste). This will copy your work to the submission box.


15. Decide whether you wish to allow voting and click on the relevant option, and complete the Notes box if there is anything you want Laurel to know.


16. Preview your efforts via the Preview button, and when you are happy, press the Submit button.


17. Sit back and wait for the votes and fan-mail.