Formatting poetry #3

The conflict with submitting poetry on YWS is that the textbox often messes up the amount of space between lines and characters. The explanation is simple; the official textbox that translates the code from what you see to code the computer interprets and displays ends up looking different (and always worse). I don't think it is made very well for poetry because each line break is interpreted as a whole paragraph according to the code, which makes a simple new line seem like it is double spaced (that hurts the flow and clarity of the poem). This means that it is impossible, yes impossible to get the format of our poetry exactly how we want it using the YWS official text box.

The solution is too use the HTML version text editor and control how the poem is suppose to look. By doing this we take the middleman (the way YWS codes for us and messes things up) out. I know what you are thinking; you expect me to code? Not really, well, yes, kinda, but only a little bit. All you have to do can be followed in a couple steps listed below;

DISCLAIMER:

Spoiler

YWS still messes with the html text editor code before publishing but it doesn't usually change the way it looks when using this method.

1. Click the </> symbol to access the html code section.

After you go to the publishing center and click submit a new work or you edit an existing work you will click the </> symbol on the top left of the create.php page. see figure below. You know if you are in the html code section based on how the button looks.

2. Paste poem.

Delete everything in the html code section and paste the poem in it. If line breaks did not carry over you can try pasting the poem into Microsoft Word or Notepad copying that text and pasting again, if not edit the poem to make it look like what you want in the editor.

3. Add the code:

Code: Select all:

on each line including blank lines.

This is a break tag for html. To make it faster you can try copying the tab to clipboard and using Ctrl + V keys to post quicker. See figure below

4. Publish.

The poem will now look like

4. One additional step for poems with whitespace:

These steps work fine for most poems however, what if we want a poem that looks like this?

The html code section will ignore any spaces past one space. The way programmers get around this is by using a entity value which tells the computer not to do that - without confusing you anymore, all you have to do is for every space you want instead of clicking the space bar type or paste this:

Code: Select all:

Known as a non-breaking space in html.

When done it should look like this in the html text editor

When published it will look like this;

Additional things you can do in this editor:

Spoiler

The following code:

Code: Select all: This text is bold This text is emphasized <del>This text is crossed out</del> This text is red

will look like this:

Another disclaimer:
Another bug in YWS' editor is that after you submit your work and go back to edit; some of the above codes will be gone. You will have to re-add them every time you edit your work.

Additional resources:

Spoiler

For additional methods for formatting poetry:
How to Format Poetry
Formating Poetry #2

Html cheat sheet (you may be able to use some tags here in YWS editor but not all tabs will work):
http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/html_cheatsheet/

How too review well:
How to poetry review
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/view ... 53&t=33226
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/view ... 53&t=99535
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/view ... 53&t=99600
http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/view ... 53&t=19457

The actual better article index:
YWS Article Index

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