8 replies to this topic

[Nymphie Tonks]

I've noticed with many of my reviews, and even with some of my responses to reviews, that random characters that I haven't typed in the review intentionally are showing up. It usually doesn't happen until I hit preview post, and when I do, a ton of random characters show up where I have an apostrophe or an ellipsis, usually.

And while sometimes I go back and edit them all out before submitting, I sometimes forget and just hit submit because I copy and paste them from a word document. And most of the time, those random characters will just disappear. But as of late, I hit post and those characters show up in my review or my response. While it isn’t that horrible, I find it mildly irritating because it does make it difficult to read at times

I’m not sure if it has something to do with the fact that I use Chrome, or if it’s because I copy and paste the reviews from a word document, but I was wondering if there was some sort of a fix for this?

And in case none of that made sense, here is an example of what I’m talking about in my response to a review:

This is a rather different and dark story. And the summary just further proves that. But I am really glad you gave it a chance! Because this is one of my new pieces and something that came from the very emotional part of my mind. And that part is also very personal to me, because I’m not one who likes people to know when I’m upset. I prefer to be alone before breaking down and when I wrote this, I was at breaking point.

And I just…I took that emotional part and twisted it into this, into Ginny. Which is also why I think it is relatable to most people who have suffered a loss. And that was actually much of my intention. I wanted to show people that this pain was felt by Ginny and many other characters after the war. And that they are just as deep as any of ours.

I was actually looking at that line the other day and thinking it may sound a bit off with my intentions in the story. I mean, I knew it was strong, but I was unsure as to what point it was at. So maybe when I got through an editing phase I’ll go through and fix that a bit. Because it is pretty strong imagery, now looking at it…

And yeah…I was trying to just…show the lost and hurt emotions, and how they can be put into pretty much any other type of imagery. It may also be the fact that I was listening to Taylor Swift’s song Breathe, which has a line that goes, ‘and for a clean break, no one’s here to save me,’ or something of the sort, and it just…the whole thing just clicked. And came into this. And I think I know what you mean, with it making sense without necessarily making sense…It’s strange, but logical…

Thanks for the beautiful review! You gave me some things to think about [hence the long response].

~Grimmerz

Any suggestions or answers as to why this is happening?

Thanks!
Mikaela

[AndrinaBlack]

I think this happens because you copy and paste from word. You could try pasting first to notepad and then copy and paste that to the review box. Notepad removes the formatting, so this might work. Otherwise you just have to try to remember to change them manually like you have done so far.

[AditiDraco95]

I have the same problem sometimes! Similar symbols appear in my reviews too (though not in review responses). However, I do not copy/paste them from Word. I just type it directly in the review box.

Also, when I try to make the heart symbol - <3 - it doesn't appear.

It's nothing too important, but I was wondering why it happens?

[Nymphie Tonks]

I had a feeling that Word's formatting was messing with it. So I'll have to start trying to use notepad to see if that fixes the issues. Though I will say, there is this option when I use Chrome to paste as plain text, and that doesn't help either...but yeah, I'll try using notepad to see if it helps

And I think with the heart symbol the reveiw box take that as coding [html coding], and because that isn't correct coding, even if you don't mean it as coding, the review box knocks that part off. Which is why it doesn't show up.

[TenthWeasleyWriter]

That particular heart symbol -- the <3 -- messes with the coding because it takes the first character as an open tag rather than, you know, just part of a heart.

You can leave a ♥ if you type (without the spacing) --

& hearts ;

if a heart is necessary. And I often find it is.

Edited by TenthWeasleyWriter, 18 February 2012 - 07:00 AM.

[AndrinaBlack]

Exactly what I was going to say about the heart symbol. Using < and > can actually cut off your whole review in the middle.

I would have thought that paste as plain text might help too... Maybe someone wiser has something more to say about the issue. Just an additional suggestion. Like with just about everything else, try clearing your cache. Maybe that helps with something.

[Elenia]

I used to have the same problem, but Notepad fixed the issue for me. It's the apostrophe, it's different when you paste it from the Word than it is when you would just type it into the text field. I guess it just doesn't recognize that one.

[the.edge.of.love]

I must add that this also happens when you paste text from the actual story, like when you quote a phrase you liked, for example However, it's easy to fix it, by simply editing it

Edited by the.edge.of.love, 18 February 2012 - 11:45 PM.

[pennyardelle]

If you look at the following image, you can see why even pasting into Notepad first won't help. The first quote is pasted from Word, and the second is written in Notepad (I kind of assumed the punctuation you used):



You can see that the quotation marks/apostrophes are shaped differently. The same thing will happen with elongated hyphens, too; if you paste from Word, they will look like "—", but in Notepad, they just look like "--". I think it's because Word actually transforms a lot of punctuation into symbols, which the archive isn't equipped to recognize in the reviews section.

Edit: Oops, accidentally forgot to change the single apostrophes, I just realized. Anyway, at least you can see what I mean about the quotation marks. If I'd remembered to change the apostrophes, they would also look different.