Formatting spaces... - Writers Forum

Hightreason · 02-14-2006, 11:14 PM

Hello,

I am incredibly new here and have only posted acouple times. I did post my first poem to the poetry forum today, though, and noticed one thing. It took out my formatting spaces. I am assuming there is not much that can be done about this, but I thought I would ask anyway. If I have more than one space back to back or the line starts with a space, the spaces are removed.
I think formatting is an essential part of written poetry. In the absence of an oration by the writer, it can give more indication as to the emotions in the piece. If there is any way you can think of to help me preserve these spaces, Iw ould be much appreciated.
Thanks much, and this looks like a great place for writers.

mammamaia · 02-14-2006, 11:26 PM

to get a line break to 'take' in a post, you sometimes have to hit the 'enter' key twice...

Titania · 02-14-2006, 11:47 PM

I've noticed that, for one thing, if importing a document from microsoft word that has tabs at the beginnings of paragraphs it takes them out. As a result, to make things easily legible, it's necessary to double space between paragraphs when posting. I think a basic rule is just to redo most formatting that carries over from a word processing application when you're posting, but I'm not sure.

One thing you could try is putting some sort of placeholder where you want the space to be at the beginning of a line (like >).

Dephere · 02-15-2006, 01:15 AM

The formatting from the copy and paste will not stay, but it can easily be fixed by re-formatting once the text is in place.

Hightreason · 02-15-2006, 09:43 AM

Like I said, I have not extensively used the forums, but cannot find any way to format the text with spaces.
For instance, take the following text:

This text is formatted
with extra
spaces

That text, which, when posted, looks like:

This text is formatted
with extra
spaces

was entered like this, with the denotation in _ representing spaces:

This_text__________is_formatted
with_____extra
___spaces

Thanks for the help.

Stewart · 02-15-2006, 10:56 AM

Just use the [CODE] [/CODE] delimiters - these acknowledge white space.

i.e.

Code:

This is the first line of my stanza
This is the second line of my stanza
This is the third line of my stanze
        This is the fourth
This is the fifth line of my stanza
        This is the sixth

mammamaia · 02-15-2006, 03:26 PM

thanks for the tip, connor... hugs, m

Hightreason · 02-15-2006, 04:11 PM

Thanks, that's a pretty good idea. However, I noticed it only makes the code box up to a certain size and then it puts scroll bars on the side of that box. This may be browser specific, I don't know. I use Firefox, and it does it with my browser. You post is short enough that it doesn't, but with poem, it added the scroll bars. Do you know of any way to stop this from happening and just make the box size to the text? On a nitpickier note, does it always have to label the box "code:"? In this case, it is NOT code.

Thanks! : )

Stewart · 02-15-2006, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hightreason

Thanks, that's a pretty good idea. However, I noticed it only makes the code box up to a certain size and then it puts scroll bars on the side of that box.

An unfortunate drawback.

Quote:

On a nitpickier note, does it always have to label the box "code:"? In this case, it is NOT code.

That would require the forum admin editing the forum's language from the admin panel.