Death of a Lover

Dana
May 27, 2007, 17:29

I offer a sympathy vote to the writer who in my opinion did not receive the kind of formatting attention that the writing would have benefited from.

Appearance of text on the page is important. It can never improve writing, but it can often bring the effect down if not done correctly.

On another writer's site I no longer have any issues although I check every submission. A long relationship (over 175 submissions and about 250 stories) with the web administrator helps. It may not increase the administrator's skill level but at least you get more respect when you whine like a baby.

The appearance of the text on the page is important.

Mo
May 27, 2007, 17:38

Dana, you lost me here. What do you think could / should have been done to improve the formatting?

I agree that the right formatting can make a big difference between a text being readable or not, but things look fine for me (using 1024x748 resolution)

Dana
May 27, 2007, 17:50

I think the upper right to lower left body-of-text break with the word 'peace' hanging out all alone is just not respectful or correct. In addition the text has to compete with various other eye catching distractions. I believe that this is so poorly administered as a format presentation that it hovers near the deal breaker category. I feel sorry for the author who no doubt labored mightily and then saw his child spilled out onto the surgery floor.

Mo
May 27, 2007, 18:22

I guess your screen is narrower than mine as the 'peace' is on the same line as the rest of the line on my screen.

As for other eye catching distractions, yes I agree, but there is not much that can be done about that as they are all part of the template. The reason they are so much more evident here is due to the submitted text being very short.

Rob
May 27, 2007, 20:20

The poem looks correctly formatted to me too - on my screen. But as a general comment, Mo, the advertising on the LH side of the top of the page sometimes breaks up the layout of a poem - which is more critical than in poetry. I know you need the advertising - but maybe you could consider repositioning it in the poetry section.

Cent
May 27, 2007, 20:41

I think on the longer poems we need to right justify them so they do not break apart once they go below the ad space on the left. Actually Rob those ads are the 'writer's' personal Google AdSense ads that are placed inside every page of an author's stories here.

Also, myself, I would double space this poem, as as it is it looks cramped and crowded together. Needs some spacing adjustments. The author needs to clarify this or do it themself when sending these in. There are certain ways, which I forget now, it's been a long time since I had poetry class, on how to show the editor how you want these spaced and how you want the stanzas seperated. An online search should be able to find this. There is a way to 'code' these poems so the parameters wanted by the writer can show exactly what he desires.

Cent
May 28, 2007, 03:39

Okay, I've done a bit of experimenting with this poem of Victor's so we can see what may work better to display the poems. (Don't worry Victor, I can easily change it back the way it was formatted before.) The thing is if you just 'center justify the poems the ad block on the left makes everything to the right of it actually 'right justify' and skews the text in a weird way to the right. Knocking it off kilter to the text that resides below the ad block, whether it is left justified totally, or center justified totally. It will still 'break' the text in this strange way and it will all look 'off' and/or 'broken'. What I have done here in experiment to show you poets how this would maybe work and look is to space the lines, then, left justify the lines that are next to the ad block. I then highlighted the words that come after/below the ad block and 'center justified' them to align with the text above. It works, but isn't perfect.

To explain better, the text from the first line, 'Last night I died' to the line 'music of your smile' was highlighted and then 'left justify' was used. I then highlighted from the line, 'melted to an everlasting peace' down and clicked 'center justify'.

The only other way I can think of to get around this problem is to space the piece down util all the text resides below the ad block. Then you can left, center, or even right justify the whole thing. But, this does leave a lot of empty space above the work.

I'll speak with Mo tomorrow and see what else can be done to fix this for the poems.

I do think shorter poems like this one look better with some spacing between each line, and double whatever the spacing between stanzas. Longer poems with much more text I'd leave single spaced or 1 and 1/2 spacing.

I'll look into this some more and get back to our poets here.

And Victor, get back to me if you just want this changed back. Easy to do. I'm just leaving the poem like this until tomorrow, or until you say change it back, so others can see what I am trying to do with it and what I am talking about.

Dana
May 28, 2007, 04:05

Well, no complaint here; nice to see someone is paying attention . . . of course, I am on the peak of Annapurna here starring up at Everest. Everest? Getting the font changed. A man can dream.

Victor
May 29, 2007, 04:45

I like the spacing between the lines but it would look nicer if you can left-align all the lines

Cent
May 29, 2007, 17:29

Victor,

No can do. The only way I can justify left everything would be to space down to have the piece totally under the ad block, then do that. I'll do it now to show you how it would look.

Cent
May 29, 2007, 17:54

Victor, Have a look now. Personally if I was going to do this and have it below the ad block I'd center justify it.

Victor
May 29, 2007, 18:12

I like the formatting of Monsoon in Mai-Salong + the extra spacing between lines

Cent
May 29, 2007, 20:49

Victor, Okay, so going by the Monsoon poem you do not mind that it breaks off and then goes to the left under the ad block? All justified left, spaced, and left under the ad block.