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Can I avoid having the automated spacing between paragraphs?


GeorgeGlass

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When I'm writing, I typically separate my paragraphs with a vertical space (ie, a paragraph mark). AFF seems to insert such spaces automatically when I post a story, so I have to go back and delete my extra spaces. Also, sometimes I don't WANT a space between 2 lines (eg, if they are part of a list or a schedule), but I can't seem to make the spacing go away. Is there a way to deal with this?

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Okay, are you copy/pasting from a word processor and using "paste from Word"?

Thing is, when you hit the enter key, the wordprocessor AND the rte both see that as a paragraph break. So, if you hit enter twice, it'll see it as 2 paragraph breaks and add the extra line.

To create a line break without it being a paragraph, you use ctrl+enter

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It's another RTE, then? I'm curious, because I know AO3 also has the line duplication issue in its RTE.

I'll have to poke about and test it, but the "Paste from Word" option should preserve the formatting, including the style setting. One of my Luddite tendencies is that I still like the illusion that each "enter" is a carriage return, so I have "No spacing" as my default style in Word. :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

No luck--it came out double-spaced no matter which of the three Paste buttons I used. However, with all 3 Paste buttons, I got a pop-up text box with the message below. Maybe if I somehow changed my browser settings so that I could paste directly into the box, it would keep my text single-spaced.

That said, the double-spacing really doesn't look as bad as I expected, so it's not that big a deal.

Because of your browser security settings, the editor is not able to access your clipboard data directly. You are required to paste it again in this window. Please paste inside the following box using the keyboard (Ctrl/Cmd+V) and hit OK
Edited by GeorgeGlass
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  • 2 months later...
Guest Magusfang

Mine is doing the same thing, but if the readers don't gripe about, I'm not going to.

Oh, and cand you tone down you're spam checker, the one word is fine, but the distorted one is giving me seizures...

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  • 1 month later...

Look, a dead horse! [cuts switch, warms up arm]

I'm currently writing a story in which vertical spacing is extremely important. It's an all-dialogue story with two characters, and I use the spacing as a way of showing who is speaking: If the lines are immediately adjacent, then the two characters are speaking alternately, whereas if there is a space between two lines, then it is the same character speaking with a pause in between his or her lines of dialogue. I can't think of another way to achieve the same effect without altering the pace of the story (eg, using script-like dialogue headings).

Has any solution been found to the mandatory-spacing-between-paragraphs problem?

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Not as far as I can tell.

I use either LibreOffice or Word 2010, and even in the "No Spacing" style, I get the extra line between paragraphs. It's not all that hard to edit it out in the RTE before I publish, or if I'm feeling up to it, I remove the lines before I copy and paste. My Word file looks awful (I don't save the version with deleted spaces between paragraphs, of course) but it posts perfectly in the RTE.

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It's not all that hard to edit it out in the RTE before I publish, or if I'm feeling up to it, I remove the lines before I copy and paste. My Word file looks awful (I don't save the version with deleted spaces between paragraphs, of course) but it posts perfectly in the RTE.

What is it you do in the RTE? I just tried messing around with it, and the only way I found to do it was to remove the paragraph break and insert blank spaces until the first word of the next paragraph moves down to the start of the next line. Is that what you do?

And what do you do in the Word file? I always take out the extra paragraph breaks before I post to AFF, but this doesn't do away with the extra space--it just keeps there from being even more extra space.

In any case, thanks for the quick response.

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Luddite that I am, I merely backspace out the extra lines in the RTE, since it's generally an extra paragraph break that gets inserted by me that gets doubled.

I do exactly the same in the Word file. Since I use the "No Spacing" format, I don't get the automatic space between paragraphs when I type. I have to manually insert those breaks with the "enter" key when I type, so before I post, I just remove that paragraph break between the paragraphs, and the formatting retains the paragraph break at the end of the last line of the paragraph.

This is a legacy, mind you, from having begun to write on a manual typewriter with a black and red cloth ribbon. I treat paragraph breaks as carriage returns.

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Luddite that I am, I merely backspace out the extra lines in the RTE, since it's generally an extra paragraph break that gets inserted by me that gets doubled.

I do exactly the same in the Word file. Since I use the "No Spacing" format, I don't get the automatic space between paragraphs when I type. I have to manually insert those breaks with the "enter" key when I type, so before I post, I just remove that paragraph break between the paragraphs, and the formatting retains the paragraph break at the end of the last line of the paragraph.

Having reread your post and looked at the spacing in several of your stories, I think we're not quite talking about the same thing. You seem to be talking about not having EXTRA space between paragraphs, whereas I'm talking about not having ANY space between paragraphs. That is, I would like to be able to have no more space between 2 separate paragraphs than there is between 2 lines of the same paragraph. Is there any way of doing that? (Short of turning the whole story into one giant paragraph and then separating the 'paragraphs' by using tabs or spaces to force each one down to the next line, which would be time-consuming.)

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I have never tried that. O.o

But looking at it logically, until the RTE stops inserting an extra space, the only other option is to use html, I'd think. But even that might not work in the archive itself. The < br > code would give you the return with no spacing. I've never tried that in the archive within a chapter, though. It does work in the review boards.

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I have never tried that. O.o

But looking at it logically, until the RTE stops inserting an extra space, the only other option is to use html, I'd think. But even that might not work in the archive itself. The < br > code would give you the return with no spacing. I've never tried that in the archive within a chapter, though. It does work in the review boards.

Well I'll be darned, you've solved it. I don't even have to use html; I can just use Find/Replace in Word to replace my paragraph breaks with manual line breaks. I tried that just now and pasted the result into the text editor, and lo and behold, the paragraph spacing was gone. Thank you!

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