Quote:
Originally Posted by seabream
Well, on "normal" posting practices, it's not just a matter of author choice. It also depends on how the story got to the site. If it was written in one program, then exported to one site, then imported to a second one from the first, and then to a third, or if they used a crossposting script, and each site handles styles differently, you can easily end up with formatting artifacts like the ones you describe, even if the original was decently structured. Depending on how long it's been, the original may no longer exist. Not all sites give much detail about what their import engines do to a story when you import them. It can be as frustrating, or more, to an author as it is to a reader to go through a long story and try to format it just the way they want it to be seen, and then have it turn out differently. And depending on the tools the author has available, it can be a lot of work to re-format a story to look the way they want it on multiple sites, given that there aren't fully standardised import processes, and even a given site changes its import engine from time to time, and as you've observed, it can't be fully automated.
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You have a good point about stories being imported multiple times and how the formatting can become rather odd after time.
I've uploaded my own stories and I always checked the formatting to make sure the paragraph spacings make sense and that nothing was lost with the upload.
To be fair, I understand know how to use html/css moderately well. I generally knkow what to look for if something does go wrong with a story upload. I don't think many authors have this technical knowledge and so if something did go wrong I'm not sure they'd know what to do to fix it.
Amalthia