However, in my text I quote a few short paragraphs from a book, including dialogue quotations. In my original, single-spaced Word document I introduced the block with a sentence ending with a colon, skipped a line, narrowed both margins to offset the block, and skipped a line before continuing the rest of the text normally.

If all margins are to be left-justified with line spaces between paragraphs, how do I indicate the extra-narrow margins and line spaces before and after the block? They mention HTML tags regarding italics and lists. Would HTML have an inset tag?

[Note: I edited my original message because I was afraid it could have been construed that I meant letter spaces instead of line spaces. ]

Am I correct to assume that at the end of the block I'd put </pre> or < /pre >? That's probably a Duh! question, but assume is a dangerous word.

I'm not really pasting anything, if you mean cut and paste. I'm just entering text and formatting it myself. Does that make a difference?

Preformatted text -- does that specifically mean narrowed margins and an extra line space before and after the segment, or does it cover a variety of odd formats?

(Sorry about my obtuseness. It's why I hated trig. The teacher always took mental shortcuts, while I needed to see every step. It's also why I loved plane geometry. Each step had to be explained logically. )

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited February 13, 2003).]

Pretty sure the spaces he was referring to were within the <> i.e. <pre></pre>.

Yes, you need to end your formatted paragraph with </pre>.

Re: pasting vs. just typing text - nope, it doesn't matter. Pretty sure Del meant pasting in the "drop it in there" sense of the word, however you want to get the text in there is fine.

I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that <pre></pre> only indents on the left, and then full-justifies the paragraph so you have a smooth margin on the right (but not an indented margin on the right). As for whether or not it puts an automatic break above and below the paragraph, I'm not sure. My guess is no, but I wouldn't worry about it since you're not doing all of the HTML coding. Someone else will be responsible for making the spacing above/below your formatted text look right. Just make sure you have the spacing you want above/below the paragraph, and make sure you start/end it with <pre></pre>.

OKAY, ALL OF THAT SAID....
I think you should use <blockquote></blockquote> instead of <pre></pre>. <blockquote> will indent BOTH margins the same (though it won't full-justify). Use it the same way we've said to use <pre>.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
[crude example]
blah blah blah here is my first paragraph, blah blah blah blah on and on and on and on and on and on and blah blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda yadda.

<blockquote>Here is my second paragraph. I don't worry about paragraph spacing cause that's someone else's job, so i just need the code for this formatted quote here so it looks indented on both sides (though not like it does here cause the html tags don't work in the post). So, this should be all you have to do to indicate your indented text.</blockquote>

And here is the beginning of my third paragraph.....
[/crude example]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One thing, just double checked with a buddy of mine. He said it does insert a space/break before and after the text. I wouldn't worry, though, cause I would imagine they'll make the spacing correct. If you're worried about it, though, I guess you could eliminate the spacing before/after the formatted paragraph, then it would look like this:

paragraph1 (then a single return, with no space)
<blockquote>paragraph2</blockquote> (again with one return and no space)
paragraph3

If you put the spaces between the paragraphs, I have to imagine they'll take them out rather than have double spaces around the quoted text.

*whew* I hope that helps. It's like trying to teach Trig over a chat board . Seriously, feel free to ask anything, and if you'd rather e-mail me, feel free.

JP

http://www.pagetutor.com/pagetutor/makapage/index.html

It teaches you step-by-step and assumes no prior knowledge. I learned more about HTML using this tutorial in a few hours than my mother did taking a class over the course of a few months. It also has links to free resources such as notepad lite, color charts, and HTMLib (an index of all the tags you'll ever need). The basic HTML tutorial is free; if you want to learn more complex coding, it's rather cheap to do so.

It's awesome.

Also, if the page is written in anything besides HTML, there is a good chance there's alot of code you'll never see by using View Source at all... and that way lies disasterous folly for silly people like me. I tried to reproduce a page once that was in PHP by copying what I could see and making just a few surface changes... turns out all I had been able to copy was surface stuff, and I lost all the functionality of the page. Don't try it! No! Bad!

View Source is a great way to learn new techniques with regular HTML, though, I'll agree wholeheartedly with that.

<P ALIGN="LEFT">The paragraph here.</P>

Kolona - if you send it to my chronicles e-mail I'm format the HTML for you if you'd like.

OK, big stupid question to those who have made submissions using e-mail attachments:

If #5 in a set of writer's guidelines says to use a simple text-file attachment OR an MS Word file, and #8 says "All text should be left-justified and each paragraph separated by a single line space", does "All" mean both file formats should be left justified, etc.? Or would that only be for the text-file, while the Word file would be formatted as usual with indenting and double spacing throughout?

#9 says "Format words to be italicized using HTML tags..." and #s 10 and 11 give directions about formatting lists and links with HTML tags. Again, do I still do all this if I'm e-mailing a Word file attachment? Or is this only if I send a simple text-file?

For all I know, it may be easier for them to reformat for online publication if even Word files have these designations. Anyone?

(As you may have gathered, this is my first e-mail attachment submission. I've submitted with snail mail and in the body of an e-mail, but never with an e-mail attachment.)

Kolona, just guessing here, but I'd say they want the tags in both formats. Actually, the .txt format is probably preferable to them, though they understand that most people will probably be more comfortable using something they use every day - .doc. What I'm guessing what they don't want is any rich text formatting - meaning formatting where you use your word processor features to bold, italicize, or tab or indent or otherwise format your text. I'd guess they're asking you to use the tags to make it as easy as possible for them to put your story up on their web site. It's simply a pain if they have to undo all of your tabs just so they can <blockquote></blockquote> your text so it looks correct.

If you want to be sure you've got all the tags you need to indicate what your document is supposed to look like, save it as a text file (.txt) and then open it in your internet browser. You should then see, basically, what your document will look like on the web (prior to your publisher doing any work to the document). Don't worry if it's not perfect, as the publisher should double check all the details, but this will at least give you some idea of what the tags are doing and what your mss will look like.

Finally, in your post you said "simple text-file attachment OR an MS Word file". I'd choose the simple text file if it were me, and make sure you only send one - don't send both attachments (you did say the guidelines said "OR").

Hope this helps.

Rest assured, CofE, that I have every confidence in the online site. The guidelines were written for people more computer savvy than I, apparently -- maybe purposely to discourage amateurs like me.

JP, you opened up a bunch of questions for me, but I'm going to play around with this a bit before I frustrate your patience. You did confirm what I thought, that I should include the tags, even in Word.

(Apparently you posted while I was preparing my response. )

i know a little html, not fluent, but "conversational" let's say. i tried what you said out of curiousity and my .txt just opens in notepad. so if you don't mind answering a possibly stupid question...why did it and how do i change that?

TTFN & ?

Not a stupid question at all, Cosmi. I wasn't really thinking things all the way through when I posted before. Your file needs to have an .html extension rather than the .txt (or .doc) extension. So, either save the file as an .html document, or if you have a .txt file already, then just rename the document and replace the .txt with .html. That should then allow you to double click on the file and have it open in your default browser.

The reason I said to save it as a .txt file originally was that I'm used to editing my HTML in Notepad/Wordpad, general text editors, and forgot that the file extension still needs to be .html rather than the default .txt.

Anyway, that should do the trick for you. Just did a little experiment here at work that you can do to see how it works. Copy the following and paste it into a Notepad or Wordpad document and save it (it'll save as a text file), then changed the .txt extension to .html and open it in your favorite browser to see what it looks like:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<b>Here is my bold text</b>
<p>Here is a new paragraph</p>
<i>Here is my italicized text</i><br>with a soft break after it<br>and another soft break
<blockquote>And here, my friends, is a block quote that indents on both sides though it may not look like it is indented on the right because it may not be long enough to span the browser window to wrap around. But we'll see.</blockquote>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sorry about forgetting that little detail about the file extension. That should do the trick for anyone who wants to try it.

JP

TTFN & lol