[dustinzgirl]

Please note that continued posting of tiny fonts with no paragraph breaks may result in closed posts. This is for continuity and design purposes. Please, use normal fonts and paragraph breaks and brown, blue, or black ink. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY!


Is formatting important? Yes! The better your formatting, the more readers and responders you will get. This is not really hard formatting, its pretty easy stuff.

First, if you have problems getting text from a program and can not remove formatting in that program, copy and paste it into notepad or wordpad and remove all formatting. Nearly all computers have a notepad or wordpad type of program.

Second, please use a normal color, like blue or black. Most readers are not going to read 500 words in bright yellow or pink, it is hard on the eyes and a lot of us spend a lot of time on here. You can change the color by clicking on the third drop down box from the top left corner of your post, it has a big A and a colored line beneath it. Please use black or blue, even dark brown.

Third, please use a normal style font. Yes, I know the different fonts look cool. But they are also hard on our eyes. Please try not to use the funky fonts like impact or garamond. You can change the font by selecting all of your text and clicking on the top left drop down box of your post until you find a normative font.

Fourth, please use a good sized font. 1 is too small, 7 is too big. 2,3,and 4 are the best for readers to see what you are writing. Too small of font or too large and most readers will just skim by the post. You can change the font size by clicking on the second drop down box from the top left corner, it has a number in the box, and then selecting a more appropriate font.

Fifth, please use a spell checker. We are not going to freak out if you spell some words incorrectly, but if you want readers to focus on your story and not on your spelling, then use a spell checker. Many browsers (IE and Firefox, at least) have spell checker add ons you can use for free that will auto check your posts. IF you do not have this, or you do not have a spell checker in the program you are using to write the story, then there is a really easy way to check spelling---open up your email, copy and paste the text like you are sending an email, and use your email program's spell checker. Hotmail, google, msn, yahoo, all have a spell checker on them.

Last but not least, paragraph breaks. A paragraph break is not an indent, it is a line of space between paragraphs, as you see in this post. Please use paragraph breaks because without it your posts will look like a big huge jumble of words, and the reader's eyes will not have a moment to reset for the next section of text. Paragraph breaks are very easy, simply read over your text, go to the last line of one paragraph, hit the enter button, and this will insert a blank line. Continue throughout your post.