Which Word Processor

[Will Hawkins]

I am a recent member who has been lurking on the site reading stories and series for enjoyment. I  am considering submitting a story. I have been brought up in the computer world using MS Word. In a communication with a member, I was instructed to use Google. Am I confined to using a word processor program with which I have no familiarity or may I submit a story using Word with which I  am familiar?

[Puppilull]

I never considered this. For my writing, I only use Word. I've never had any formatting problems. 

Edited September 22, 2017 by Puppilull

[Will Hawkins]

Thanks for your prompt reply Puppi. If GA will accept stories written in MS Word that relieves my mind.

Misterwill

[mogwhy]

now, I only write poetry and i upload those chapters using a cut and paste. i don't use MS word, i actually hate it  . i use WordPerfect  as my word processor  

[Timothy M.]

I think any version of Word is fine, just make sure you do not use indents or add empty lines between paragraphs.

 

 

 

 

[Cia]

Yes, Word is actually the preferred editor to copy text from to use in GA's text box. If you want the best visual result for the chapter, don't use fancy formatting as mentioned. In fact, it's best to use the option to remove formatting that will appear below the text editor as a clickable option once you've pasted in your text. That strips out indents and hidden formatting you might not see. It does also strip out italics and bold, so you have to place those back into the text if you have them, but as that is 'special formatting' in writing and shouldn't be used excessively anyway. 

[Myr]

I use Word as well. 

In theory, it doesn't matter what you use.  In practice, it's best to pay attention to what the rich text editor does when you paste in your story from wherever you wrote it. 

 

[Former Member]

Used word... But notepad works for poetry(for me)

Stories...I don`t know. If you`re familiar with word, use word.

But there`s lots of great freeware out there to experiment with.

 

Also...For android users, try simplenotepad. It works great for me.

[JayT]

my question is why is it that sometimes the text shows up dark when you change the contrast??? it does that in some of my chapters but not in all....I think it does it when I choose the remove formatting button

[Former Member]

4 hours ago, JayT said:

my question is why is it that sometimes the text shows up dark when you change the contrast??? it does that in some of my chapters but not in all....I think it does it when I choose the remove formatting button

The values set for contrast are probably stored with the formatting... Maybe.

[William King]

I would add that my experience is that it doesn't matter what word processor you use, but copying and pasting from Android will not keep any formatting. It has been stated the ideal is to paste choosing the no format option and put the italics and bold  ( center text ) back in by editing the text you have pasted. That is rather difficult to do, in terms of remembering where the italics, bold text is or continuously moving back and forwards from the original text. The easiest option is to code the italics and bold, it causes no problems and solves introducing errors by missing some italics, bold text.

[Cia]

We've said many times that the issue with 'pasting from Android' is typically the processor capabilities in the device itself. In theory, you can use mobile devices to post. In reality, most of them just don't do well because they don't have the computing power comparable to a computer. That causes issues. The best way to post in the text editor in Stories is to use Word and a Windows-based computer. 

[William King]

On 22/09/2017 at 1:50 PM, Cia said:

It does also strip out italics and bold, so you have to place those back into the text if you have them, but as that is 'special formatting' in writing and shouldn't be used excessively anyway. 

 

Let's ignore the processing power for a minute, because the essential problem is italics. Authors use italics all the time, quite commonly to represent thoughts rather than using or combined with single quotation marks. It is difficult to go through a copy and pasted chapter and edit back in the italics, unless you have marked the italics in some way. If you are going to mark the italics in order to easily edit back in after processing, then why not code the italics? If you code the italics when you save the chapter - hey presto - the italics are there. The saving process puts in the formatting, but strips out the code, and so I see no problems. This is a solution for not only Android copy and paste, but for anyone who loses their basic formatting when copying and pasting their chapters. 

 

I do not want to specifically tell users how to do this, I think that is down to you at GA ( just in case you have an issue with it ) although I can't see why you would. In effect this is a solution for anybody with formatting problems, what do you think?

 

[Cia]

I think that's been discussed ad nauseam. Life isn't perfect, and neither is the text editor. If you find a formatting solution that works and doesn't break when the various upgrades happen, great. For my part, I prefer to keep my formatting as simple as possible because I don't want that, or the words, to distract from the way I hope the story is unfolding in the reader's mind.