How do I keep italics when posting a piece?

you mean paragraphing? in a story you need to hit return twice between paras just to get a new line. three hits will provide a gap between paragraphs. in a poem it seems to work as normal. one hit for a new line two for a space. I think. I've not used html for any of stories/poems and they always seem to come out about right. the danger of html is that one small mistake and you cock the whole page up and, as JH says, nothing will come out or you just get a load of gibberish. my honest advice to people is, if you are unsure of html and are only posting straightforward stuff then don't use it. bold, italics, and odd spacings for concrete poems need it though.

Just read your story Spack.. made me laugh man.. thought it was very clever.. nice one..

I think you have to type using html tags either side of the sections of italicised writing. careful tho' or andrew will do his nut if you get it wrong and has to wade his way through loads of gibberish. to test if you have got it right, paste your story into word or wordpad, open up a browser window then open the document through the browser. if the italics look right then it should work on abc too. before the italics start type: and where they end type: if that doesn't work you'd better hope that Em comes to your aid coz she knows about this stuff.

thanks that's helped. Means I've just got to start deciding sooner whether I'm writing a poem or prose .........

Thanks very much, ill try that. Apologies to Andrew in advance for when it all goes terribly wrong... cheers joe

Em is our saviour! and she's leaving! or what? sad. or.............

Use this basic structure when you post the piece or it won't work: html the writing you want displayed in italics goes here. /html *n.b* html and /html are both enclosed with <> as well, but I didn't put the tags around them just in case.. so I hope that makes sense. *** What I suggest you do is start a piece of writing called experiment or test. With a clear note to the editors and to the readers that you are just testing out html, then test out the tags, play around a bit, see what works and what doesn't. Don't write masses of words though, just a few paragraphs should suffice, write some paragraghs in italics and some not in italics. Then post the experimental test piece and check your writing comes out ok in italics etc.. and when you feel happy with the presentation of it - then post the full piece, for real. Should work ok if you do this, I tried it out last year and I got my writing to go into italics ok. I even managed to change it's colour etc, though I did have a few difficulties with it not producing the colour I wanted.. italics worked fine though..

oh yeah and if you're gonna be using HTML you will want to use the

tag to seperate your paragraphs, so the structure inbetween the tags looks like this: A window is something we look out of.

But imagine a house that didn't have any windows.

If houses had wings, would they fly?

Perhaps they would, but where would they go? etc etc.. I think you get the idea by now, I deliberately used a paragraph for each sentence to illustrate what I mean.. Sorry if I sound patronizing.. but I'am not sure if you knew HTML or not, so am going through the whole structure with you.. to help you, if you don't.. and don't forget this section goes before the tag as well: et etc * not sure what would happen if I post the whole structure in one go on the forums, I 've never tried HTML out on the threads before.. so didn't want to chance it..* so without the brackets its this: HTML HEAD /HEAD BODY Your writing goes here, use the for italics Use

to seprate your paragraphs. /BODY /HTML All the tags above are surrounded by these brackets < > etc etc.. God I'am an awful teacher.. but it aint easy to explain stuff via threads etc.. so sorry for the repition I don't mean to sound patronizing or anything.. jus trieing be helpfull.. good luck dude.

Thank you so much! And trust me you are not being patronising. I dont know my HTML's from my RAMs from my 'fatal error's. Hopefully I've got it right now. Funky, by the way, that poem about the flying house is great. Where would flying houses go? Thanks alot, I'll tell you how succesful i am. THANK YOU Joe

How the hell do you guys know all this stuff? *awestruck expression*

hmm, i didn't mention all the head and body tags for simplicity. I might be wrong here, but every page of abc is already headed up and so any html tag you insert will work. before html was turned off in the forum you could change the colour of your type or make it bold by simply using tags without all the nonsense. if you right click on a story and view source you will see what I mean. the breaks are converted to
even though the author didn't type them that way. having said that, it will be necessary to write that way for my test example to work in a simple browser window so I was definitely wrong in that respect. in fact funky's test idea is better than mine if you haven't used html before. I was just trying to prevent an accident on abc. :-) good luck.

[Not remotely sure whether any of this will actually work on the main site] But I can tell you that *if* we didn't lock it out (of course I can't bloody remember, it was a year and a half ago), putting or tags would kill a page stone dead in any non-Microsoft browser. Which is why I _think_ we locked it out.

Thanks alot guys, glad you enjoyed it. Chant you are right, its should be 'concession' not 'conceit'. Something felt wrong about conceit when I was writing it but at the same time I had absolutely no idea what the word was I needed. So in my laziness I decided that I'd leave conceit in and hope that it meant something that was vaguely relevent. How wrong i was. I looked up conceit on 'dictionary.com' ;-) and 'a favorable and an unduly high opinion of one's own abilities or worth' or even worse 'a fanciful poetic image, especially an elaborate or exaggerated comparison' were not the meanings i was going for. Thanks for pointing that out to me, im sure i never would have checked it. Funky, I do respect Geekdom. I was actually very impressed how simple HTML was to use. Satan manifests himself for me only in the speed with which technology changes. I used to be able to programme simple games on my Commodore 64! Gone are the days of making your own text game which would almost always start with 'you are in a dark room. You can make out two doors. One to the east, and one to the west. You can hear the banging of drums in the distance.' Well thats how mine started... Anyway, thanks for everything Funky, never will my sentences go without emphasis (in italics) again. I really appreciate you and Chant reading my story. Thanks again, Joe

Well i tried submitting my story last night and it came with no text this morning...oops. But some kind soul gave it five stars anyway...no accounting for taste. So Ive just done an experiment and realised what id done wrong. Ive resubmitted the story now and if all goes acording to plan it should be posted in all its italicised glory once its been filtered. I would like to thank Funky, Stromy, my mum, my dad, J.N. Henstoat... *breaks down into tears of joy* Oh, if you want to read it, its called X: Walking with Homo Sapiens plug, plug, plug!!!! cheers Joe

Sorry Spack, I gave you the wrong advice last night.. you don't need all that HTML blurb I was talking about when you post your story onto abctales.. you know the vibe.. forget about allo that when you submit the story.. or it will come up a blank.. you just need to use the tags on their own and that's it.. sentence you want to italicise snetenc you want ot keep plain. *** (forget the other tags) *** didn't think man.. was a bit out of it last night.. Stormy is right - when you post a piece it automatically gets headed, gets the and tags put in.. else if it didn't you wouldn't be able to read it in your browser window when it goes into the story gallery.. sometimes I can be really dumb and not think.. my brains a bit scatty to say the least.. so sorry Spack was too eager to try and help as usual , running in without thinking, causing chaos.. confusing you.. and ended up not helping at all.. I will think more carefully about what I say in future. Though having said that - nothing is wasted.. at least you know the basic structure of a HTML document now anyway. Should you ever need to know.. what you do is type that out onto notepad, then save it with .htm at the end and in the * all files * category. Then open it with your browser window, by clicking on file in the top left hand corner and going to open - then browse through your documents to find the .htm file. Or even simpler just press CTRL + O to browse for the .htm file. Then click ok when you find it and it should come up in your browser window. You don't have to be on-line to check your documents either, you can do it off-line.. anyway I won't go on.. jus feeling guilty for giving you the wrong advice. if you want to learn more about HTML do a search on the internet.. there's loads of resources that you can learn from.. and will teach you how it's done.. and it's free. You can learn about just about anything you need to know, on the web. Is better to get a book though if you can.. or print out the pages.. as screens tire your eyes out.. anyway sorry for leading ya down the wrong path mate..

Rightio, thats no problem. It's about time I learnt how to do all this HTML rubbish anyway. Believe it or not it is starting to make some sense to me. I'm sorry to have taken up so much of your time. As for leading me up the wrong path, not at all! I was positively pathless and any direction was of great help. It seems to me that the devil, when he invented HTML, really new what he was doing. He left a few clues though... The slash with which to sl/t your wrists. And HTML obviously stands for Heathens Together Making Love. Anyway, you have been legendary, i'll tell you how it goes... Thanks Joe

thanks for the HTML lessons! (I used to have a basic knowledge but it has slipped) I was just about to post asking about spacing so I'll tag along here. is it just
blah blah
? and can you achieve this without using HTML? I'm sure i got the spacing right without even thinking about it on the first couple of things I submitted. Now it just seems to get all joined up!

Ive just looked and the story is up and fully (well, in all the right places) italicised!!! Thanks again, it was a struggle but we made it in the end. cheers

i had a look and liked your story a lot Spack. i thought it was witty and well-observed. a thoroughly enjoyable read, and one i'd recommend. one query. when you write:- "What a conceit." is that what you meant? or did you mean "What a concession."? ps thanks to everyone on the thread for clearing up the use of italics, something i had wondered about, but never dared to experiment on, for fear of setting the Pack amongst the pigeons.

Nah the devil didn't make HTML.. it's a good thing, cause it opens up the media world for everyone.. anyone who takes the time to learn HTML can put up their own homepage for free. Have their own media spot displayed for the world to see. HTML isn't that hard to do, I reckon just about everyone can learn it.. it was designed that way. To be as simple as it could be. As long as you start with the basics and work your way up.. start on a solid foundation.. it's not that difficult to learn. HTML sounds like a difficult thing to do.. but it aint.. what it stands for is even worse: Hyper Text Markup Language but blame that on the geeks who came up with the name, geeks are fond of creating difficult words that don't trip easily off the tongue.. though they're good people man, I sing them my praises, as they made HTML an easy language for people to understand and learn. So you have to let them have their odd word and phrases.. they do it on purpose I'am sure.. jus for a laugh. HTML is a revolution really in terms of media.. cause before if you wanted to get your own personal message across to the world, you had to rely on newspapers and TV, with all the camera crews and production crews that went with it. Now for the first time in history, content has been democratized and is no longer defined as the sole province of governments and mega-corporations. The media of the internet is open to everyone. Nowadays all you need is a simple home computer, a notepad and the knowledge of how to do HTML. And you got your very own media spot. Jus remember HTML was designed for everyone. It's not a programming language. Just simple instructions you give to a page-reading machine(browser). Is easier I reckon than programming your video or telly.. as long as you satrt from the basics and work your way up. If you ever wanted to get into building web-sites for people as a career though - then there's loads more to learn than HTML.. like JavaScript, CCS, Dynamic HTML.. even Java.. etc etc. Something I'am beginning to learn, some companies want flashy stuff man.. stuff you can't do with just HTML. And the thing is it's always changing.. no doubt in years to come I'll have to learn new stuff.. to keep up with technology.. that's one reason why computers do my head in at times.. there's just so much to learn. But web-site design professionally is a specialized area.. and you don't need to worry about that. For a simple homepage HTML is all you need to know. The hardest part about making a homepage is thinking of what you're gonna say. Go 4 it.. sorry for the lengthy post of geekdom.. but I always try to encourage people to get into computers, as they are the future. There's nothing to be scared of really.. jus need a little patience, and you'll have your own homepage in no time.