Formatting for the Horizon PotC Archive

HOW TO PREPARE STORY FILES FOR UPLOAD

The database will only accept text files in the proper format. Here's how to do that.

STEPS TO TAKE

After your story is finished, save your file and make a backup. Then follow these steps. It might be helpful to read this whole page first, but that's up to you. If you have any questions or need any help at all, please feel free to ask!

1. Make sure you have the proper headers. See HEADERS for more information, including header code you can copy and paste.

2. Find all instances of italics, bold, etc., and put the HTML tags around them. Replace word processor "smart quotes" etc. with their text equivalents. See FORMATTING for details.

3. Look for any evil punctuation symbols that your word processor inserted. For example, the evil "smart quotes" and "smart dashes." Replace them with their text equivalents. See EVIL PUNCTUATION for more information

4. Find any special characters, and either replace them with the Character Codes, or flag them and make a note for me, so I can put those codes in for you. See SPECIAL CHARACTERS.

5. If you will need other coding, such as links, embedded images, specific font color, font size, etc., let me know. This has to be done after upload.

6. Create your text file. See TEXT FILES.

7. Send it to Horizon!

HEADERS

Below is a list of headers in the order Horizon uses. Not all stories have all these headers, so some are optional. Headers in bold are required.

Title:
Pairing:
Rating:
Disclaimer: (If you don't want Horizon's default disclaimer, you can put your own here)
Originally Posted: (The date the story was first posted on LJ or your site or elsewhere)
Beta:
Dedication:
Note:
Warning:
Summary:

And here's everything all coded for you, ready to paste into your text file!

Title: xx Pairing: xx Rating: xx Disclaimer: xx Originally Posted: xx Beta: xx Dedication: xx Note: xx Warning: xx Summary: xx

Right-click in the box above, type Ctrl-A to select all, then Ctrl-C to copy. Head over to your text file, and Ctrl-V to paste. Then replace "xx" with the appropriate information.

(The code is the line break. More on this below.)

FORMATTING

You can use any of the following tags.

HTML Code	What it does
<i>text here</i>	Italics
<b>text here</b>	Bold
<u>text here</u>	Underline
<strike>text here</strike>	~~Strikethrough~~
<br />	Line Break. Forces a line to end, and the next line to appear immediately below. Use this for lists (such as the story headers), poetry quoted within the story, etc. The database recognizes your paragraph breaks (single blank line between paragraphs, as just happened here) without any coding. However, if you want several blank lines, such as between story sections, use an extra <br /> for each blank line you want.
<HR>	Makes a line across the page, like this :
<center>text here</center>	Centers text on the page

EVIL PUNCTUATION SYMBOLS

BEWARE OF THE FOLLOWING PUNCTUATION SYMBOLS. Word processors such as Microsoft Word usually insert these characters in place of their text equivalents. However, the Horizon database won't recognize them, and will strip them out. Your story could wind up (for example) without any quotation marks. Not good!

Nasty Bad	Use This Instead
Smart quotes ( ‘ and ’ )	regular apostrophe ( ' )
Smart quotes ( “ and ” )	regular quotes ( " )
Smart dashes ( — or – )	double-dash ( -- )
Word processor ellipses character ( … )	three periods ( ... )

SPECIAL CHARACTERS - à ë î ø ú sometimes ÿ

Do not use special language characters. For example:
é -- as in fiancé
ñ -- as in señorita

The database will remove them. Thus, fiancé becomes fianc, and señorita becomes seorita. Not good!

Special characters need to be coded in. For example, é is the code for é, and ñ is ñ. Therefore:

fiancé becomes fiancé.
señorita becomes señorita

CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST OF CHARACTERS.

This is a bit daunting. So if you prefer, just let me know if you have words needing special language characters, and I'll put the code in for you.

TEXT FILES - the only files the Database can read

A text file is any file with a name that ends with .txt and which contains nothing but plain text. None of the following are visible to the naked eye: bold, italics, special characters, smart quotes or dashes, colors, different font sizes, tabs, centering, etc.

You may still see all of this in your doc file, but this is why it's important to do the HTML coding before converting it to a text file. If you haven't done that yet, return to the top of this page and proceed from Step 2.

Turning your Word Doc file into a Text file

Save it using "Save As" rather than the usual "Save." You'll see an area to fill in File Name, and another area to select File Type ("Save As Type" or some such). Among your choices will be Text, Text (*.txt), Text Only, ASCII DOS Text, or something of that nature. Any of these will work. If you have a choice between Text Only and Text Only with Line Breaks, choose the Text Only option.

MISCELLANEOUS - coding for links, embedded images, etc.

If you need images (illustrations), links, or other formatting (font size, color, etc.) in your story, no problem. Just let me know. This has to be coded after upload, so I need to do that.

CREDITS

Originally contributed by Merry Lynne, written for the due South fanfic archive. Edited by Porridgebird for the Horizon PotC archive (2009).

If you have any questions, or suggestions as to how this instruction file could be more helpful, please contact me. Thank you!

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