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Space breaks for poetry posts

  1. imani
    Member

    I would like to make indentations when posting certain poems without the annoying "wrap" effect which acts as a new paragraph starter (you know, with huge gaps of space everywhere). I have searched the forums and the only suggestion that came close to solving it was the nbsp html but it is hardly sufficient as it only makes a brief indent, no matter how many I use. It also disappears if I dare to re-edit a post after publishing, forcing me to go back into "Code" to put them in all over again.

    Is there any kind of code that can do this? I have a litblog so this is an issue for me. I'd hate to have to move to somewhere like Blogger (ewwwww!) because I can only post the most deadeningly formatted poems here. Is this a challenge to render in CSS?

  2. timethief
    Member

    Have you tried

     

  3. drmike
    Member

    The poster states that they have.

    Gotta admit that I'm at a loss myself. We've covered poetry about a dozen times in the past but it's been usually how to do line breaks.

    Hmmm....

  4. drmike
    Member

    Will this work?

  5. timethief
    Member

    I jsut tried this and it worked. If you're really up against the wall you can create the poem as an image with the correct spacing and the upload it as you would any other image.

  6. imani
    Member

    Thanks for the replies! Drmike and timethief I have tried that but it works like any other wrapping code, producing gaps between the lines before and after it as though I were starting a new paragraph. Which is not what I want. :( This is for lines within a stanza.

    I've browsed through the Poetry tag and it seems as if people just avoid it. Unfortunately I'm highlighting the poems of others.

    I will try the image idea. Do you have any links to a site with instructions on how to do that? Is it as simple as writing it in a word processor and converting it somehow?

  7. timethief
    Member

    I have a windows XP media center edition operating system. I typed the poem into msPaint and formatted it. Then I saved it and uploaded it as an image.

  8. raincoaster
    Member

    Gaps between the lines? Hold down the Shift Key when hitting Enter and you'll get single-spaced text if you're using the Visual editor. That's the only trick I know.

  9. imani
    Member

    Timethief, I'm on a Mac so I'll google and see if anything helpful comes up. Thanks again.

    Raincoaster I tried that on your suggestion but the spaces aren't preserved when the post is actually published. The only way that seems to work is when I'm writing in regular prose like this, without forcing any new lines of my own. It's a shame as I got extremely excited when I read your tip. Thanks all the same.

  10. raincoaster
    Member

    Isn't that strange: I used it myself twice today. It must be the Mac/PC issue rearing its ugly head.

    What about typing it straight into the HTML editor? If you make them sequential lines input on THAT screen, should it not come out single-spaced?

  11. aergonaut
    Member

    raincoaster, I think imani wants to indent some lines, not just get single line breaks.

    imani, have you tried using

    <span></span>
    instead of
    <p></p>
    ? If that doesn't work, maybe try changing the
    style
    element on the
    <p>
    to
    style="margin:0;margin-left:0.5in;text-indent:-0.25in;
    ?

  12. raincoaster
    Member

    Yes, I can't help with the indenting. I only know the single-spacing trick. If I had to indent something because it was someone else's poem, I would use the Block Quotes, which both indent and indicate that it's not your original material.

    Or I would center it. That works well with a lot of poetry.

  13. drmike
    Member

    Maybe if you posted a poem and we could see what you're looking at, we might be able to help a bit better.

  14. risenphoenix
    Member

    Type your poem out in notepad as you need it. Open ur editor and paste it in the code section.Check it in the Visual section.. post it.

  15. drmike
    Member

    We've had reports that the rich text editor will strip the space.

    Do feel free to try though. It may work for you.

  16. imani
    Member

    I really appreciate all of the help! Ok, here's a link to a picture where I captured what I'd like the poem to look like once it's published. It's an excerpt from a Debora Greger poem.

    Aergonaut I tried your span idea along with raincoaster's single-space tip and the my spaces are preserved! Except that the span code shows up in the published post as well. At first I didn't type it in Code because the tab key works differently there. (It doesn't create indents it moves to different sections of the webpage). I tried to use the span code there, using the space bar to get the indentations I need but they don't show up when published. It seems to be tab or nothing. Is there something else I should be doing?

    Changing the style doesn't work because I get the line wrapping effect.

    Raincoaster, the problem with using any of the formatting features available in Visual is that it produces line wraps. I'd like the right indentation *and* single-space lines. The shift key tip can't get around that (unfortunately).

    Thanks risephoenix but as drmike said the rich text strips the space.

  17. imani
    Member

    Here's a link to the results of aergonaut's idea when I use the span code in Visual. I tried typing it in Visual, going to Code, then back to Visual--this is what I do when I use the code for underlines--but, again, the space isn't preserved.

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