[Michael Cantor]

I tried that solution also, Anne, and the problems were that (1) forwarding it to myself wasn't getting me published, and (2) after a brief while I began to reject everything I submitted (despite the neat single-spacing), often with unfavorable remarks.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

(2) after a brief while I began to reject everything I submitted (despite the neat single-spacing), often with unfavorable remarks.

Michael,

Would you mind forwarding? I'm just dying to read those remarks!

Thanks,

Bill

[Julie Stoner]

FYI, Nemo's trick--i.e., replacing each line-end Enter with Shift-Enter--is explicitly required by a few online journal editors, to save them the hassle of reformating submissions for the Web.

[Ann Drysdale]

Good Lord!

I have been reading all your posts again and I've just realised that I have never, not ever in my life, used the "Enter" key at the end of a line. I have always used the one that's easier to reach, which has a curly backwards arrow on it and I've always referred to as "Return", though it doesn't say it on it. Like a typewriter.

Since this thought occurred ot me, I've been playing with a fine, new blank document. I have discovered, all by myself, something wondrous. My old way capitalises the first letter of the next line, as does most of my formal poetry. (If I don't want capitals, I go back and change 'em.) I see that "Enter" does the same, whereas using the shift key with either of the other two starts the next line in lower case! Wow! (this is going to make free verse a whole lot easier!)

And no - I am not joking. This, for me, is a revelation. I am ridiculously pleased (though I take this to mean that if I do that thing when submitting formal stuff to magazines, I'll have to remember to put the capitals in, instead of... Ah, swings and roundabouts...)

[Janice D. Soderling]

"a curly backwards arrow on it "

I don't know exactly what your keyboard set-up is, Ann, but the "curly backwards arrow" is an Enter key. There is also an Enter on the numeric pad, and I suspect that is what you mean by "hard to reach". keyboards may have two just as my keyboard has two Shift and two Ctrl keys.

Keyboards may vary somewhat, but the basic QUERTY keyboard + numeric keypad is set up like this, the only exception being that some keys are assigned linguistic variations such as (on mine) the keys å, ö ä and options to write ñ and ü and so forth.

In the formatting rules for SCR and the Chimaera Paul Stevens had special explanations about using the Shift-Enter rather than Enter and why the submitter should use it. I was going to refer you to this explanation earlier, but they aren't there just now, because, I suppose, the submissions are closed.

No matter, you have got all the advice you need and solved your problem. This is just to say that your curly backwards arrow key is the same as the key marked Enter (which actually should also have a "curly backwards arrow" on it.

[Ann Drysdale]

Oh, dear. Now I feel silly and sad. Not your fault, Janice, I hasten to say. I blame my eyes. They don't link up properly to my head. If anything is presented to me in the form of an icon or a hieroglyph, I have to turn it into words before I can see it. To tell myself what it is I'm looking at, so to speak.

When I receive an instruction it's the same. A curly arrow, turning round and pointing backwards, says to me "go back - return" whereas I'd expect an "enter" arrow to be pointing straight ahead, summoning me to "come on in". But when one key has a picture and one has a word how is an elderly innocent to understand that they are actually the same?

So - there isn't a Return key on a computer keyboard? I truly believed in mine. Alas, my last link with the Olivetti has been sundered. I shall use this as an excuse for a small, strong drink.

[Janice D. Soderling]

No one knows anything until they learn it. If you haven't used Shift + Enter, you might not have looked at other shortcut keys.

If you work in Word, look at your tutorial, esp. the function keys. You might discover other time-saving devices. Time may be money, but time is also time, and we need all we can get. Here are some of the key combinations your tutorial will explain.

Look at them all but don't be intimidated, just select the ones that you think would be useful and save time by learning them. Such as Shift F3 which changes case. You seem to have been doing it manually. Shortcut options have toolbar equivalents, but shortcuts are called shortcuts for a reason. I am just listing a few.

Key combinations

Function keys
F1 Get Help or the Office Assistant
F4 Repeat the last action
F12 Choose the Save As command (File menu)

SHIFT+Function key
SHIFT+F2 Copy text
SHIFT+F3 Change the case of letters
SHIFT+F7 Choose the Thesaurus command (Tools menu, Language submenu)
SHIFT+F12 Choose the Save command (File menu)

CTRL+Function key
CTRL+F2 Choose the Print Preview command (File menu)

CTRL+SHIFT+Function key
CTRL+SHIFT+F12 Choose the Print command (File menu)

ALT+Function key
ALT+F1 Go to the next field
ALT+F3 Create an AutoText entry
ALT+F4 Quit Microsoft Word

ALT+SHIFT+Function key
ALT+SHIFT+F2 Choose the Save command (File menu)

CTRL+ALT+Function key
CTRL+ALT+F1 Display Microsoft System Information CTRL+ALT+F2 Open command (File menu)

[Ann Drysdale]

Intimidated? Moi?

[Kate Benedict]

Word is a hassle for poets! I find it too cubmersome to press Control/Enter after each line. I just press Enter and let those darn paragraph icons have their day, and then I do a Global Replace. Press Replace then More then Special then Replace Paragraph Mark with Replace Manual Line Break.

Works like a charm.

Copying into Notepad will work but I'd rather have my Word doc formatted correctly.

[peterjb]

This is somewhat up my street because I’ve tried, with less than complete success so far, to automate the conversion from the unwanted “double-spaced” form that can often result from pasting text from Word or other formatted source. The root problem is that, in Word, pressing the Enter key gives you a paragraph break, which is not necessarily the same as a line break, although in Word they look the same (assuming you’re using a default “Normal” or similar paragraph style).

If you use default Word styles, you’re making a paragraph break each time you press the Enter key. Here’s an example, with the “new paragraph” marker symbol ¶ (pilcrow) visible. (To make these and other normally hidden characters visible in Word, click the ¶ button on the toolbar.)



When you copy the text from Word and paste it into an HTML context (like a formatted email) the Word paragraph breaks become HTML paragraph breaks — and an HTML paragraph break includes, by default, some vertical space to separate it from the next paragraph. So what you intended as lines within stanza or strophe are now spaced paragraphs, and any intended paragraph break (made by pressing Enter twice) looks too wide because there’s an extra blank paragraph there.

Why (as per John’s comment) does the problem sometimes not occur when you paste into an email? That will be because some email programs preface every HTML message (behind the scenes in the code at the top) with styling code to say that paragraphs are NOT to be spaced — the code redefines an HTML paragraph to be like a default Word one. You might think this is a good idea which solves the problem, but it only creates others. When the message gets to someone else’s mail program, the double spacing may appear then, if their mailer strips out or overrides the styling for unspaced paragraphs. Or if you copy text from the email then paste it to some other HTML environment, again you’ll have the double-spacing look.

Bottom line: the best system, as others have mentioned, is to make your line breaks in Word using Shift+Enter (not Ctrl+Enter since that makes a page break).

If you have existing text that you don’t want to convert manually in Word, try pasting it, all in one block, into the online submission form at 14 by 14 , without submitting, of course. No need to enter a name etc; simply paste into the Submission area. Nothing is sent anywhere or stored; the processing takes place on your browser. Paste in, using the Paste button (or the other method described for Firefox); the conversion is done automatically and you can then select all the text to copy and paste to wherever.

The above converter also does a few other things: changes straight to curly quotes, double or triple hyphens to em-dashes, UBB code to HTML. It isn’t perfect; for example there are some bugs in the handling of indented lines or blocks. When I’ve got a few more of the wrinkles out of it, I plan to put it online somewhere separately as just a converter.