Giant paragraph breaks

[Guest sappysappysappy]

When I posted a story in this site by copy-pasting the text the spacing between the paragraphs was enormous. Other stories on this site do not appear to have this problem. How can I get the text to look normal?

(stories under same name as here)

[DemonGoddess]

First, have you looked at this FAQ? Second, what are you using as your word processor and copying FROM, program wise?

[Guest sappysappysappy]

The FAQ doesn't seem to have the answer to this problem. The word processor I use is the 2003 version Word ( with .doc type files )

[DemonGoddess]

Are you clicking on the paste from Word icon, and then copying in to that text box?

I thought of something else as well. How many carriage returns do you make between paragraphs? If you do it at the end of the paragraph ONLY, the RTE will parse that to where there is the line in between the paragraphs. If you do it more than that, the RTE will see each carriage return as an empty paragraph.

[Guest sappysappysappy]

Are you clicking on the paste from Word icon, and then copying in to that text box?

I thought of something else as well. How many carriage returns do you make between paragraphs? If you do it at the end of the paragraph ONLY, the RTE will parse that to where there is the line in between the paragraphs. If you do it more than that, the RTE will see each carriage return as an empty paragraph.

Originally I tried to simply paste the text into the text area. The first time I tried to edit it it added an empty line between each paragraph making the spaces even larger. When I deleted the empty lines I usually leave between paragraphs after pasting it in the text box, the result was still large spaces.

[DemonGoddess]

The problem is how one software package works as opposed to another. If you're adding more than one carriage return in your original document, the Word default is for a carriage return (enter) to be a paragraph container. So when the RTE translates that, if you have, say, 3 carriage returns at the end of a paragraph, it not only inserts the blank line at the end of the paragraph, it also inserts additional blank lines even though those paragraphs are empty.

I looked in the database at your chapters, and this is part of the markup I found.

<p dir="LTR">

What SHOULD be there is

<p>

What word is telling your document, is to RESTRICT it's format from left to right. So, somewhere in your default settings for Word, you have it it forcing all documents to left to right in format, regardless of output medium. As I've not used Word in a number of years, if I remember right, where you find this would be in your document settings. I'll check with a normal Word user to be sure.

For whatever reason, that little snippet of additional code is adding extra spaces. I removed it from the first paragraph of your newest page, and now it doesn't have all the extra spaces.

[Guest sappysappysappy]

The problem is how one software package works as opposed to another. If you're adding more than one carriage return in your original document, the Word default is for a carriage return (enter) to be a paragraph container. So when the RTE translates that, if you have, say, 3 carriage returns at the end of a paragraph, it not only inserts the blank line at the end of the paragraph, it also inserts additional blank lines even though those paragraphs are empty.

I looked in the database at your chapters, and this is part of the markup I found.

<p dir="LTR">

What SHOULD be there is

<p>

What word is telling your document, is to RESTRICT it's format from left to right. So, somewhere in your default settings for Word, you have it it forcing all documents to left to right in format, regardless of output medium. As I've not used Word in a number of years, if I remember right, where you find this would be in your document settings. I'll check with a normal Word user to be sure.

For whatever reason, that little snippet of additional code is adding extra spaces. I removed it from the first paragraph of your newest page, and now it doesn't have all the extra spaces.

Thank you. Should I do something to prevent this problem from occurring the next time I post something?

[DemonGoddess]

yep, someone who uses Word regularly will have to verify, but you should be able to go in to your program options, and turn that off. I'm not exactly sure where, however, as I've not used Word for something like six years or better now

[Guest sappysappysappy]

yep, someone who uses Word regularly will have to verify, but you should be able to go in to your program options, and turn that off. I'm not exactly sure where, however, as I've not used Word for something like six years or better now

I've checked the coding issue you mentioned. It's not a Word program problem. It's a feature that enables bidirectional writing for writing in a right to left directed language(dir="LTR" stands for left-to-right directed text). Can't this issue be resolved on your end? This is a feature I need in my word processing program and I believe the more recent programs nowadays include them automatically to serve a wider clientele so this might be beneficial to the site in any case.

[DemonGoddess]

It's not a default setting for Word, is the issue. Like many things, the RTE (any of 'em really) are set to work with the primary default setting of a given program. So, in order to make it so it doesn't continue to happen, you'll have to set up the document to do WITHOUT the LTR command, when typing in English.