This page is not designed to make you an expert in HTML. I'm not an expert in HTML myself. What this is designed to do is to show you just enough to be able to submit stories.

Okay, believe it or not, this is fairly easy. So, take a deep breath and read on. Save this file if you want to. You can print it up later, or save it to your hard drive so you can refrence it if you want.

The most important thing to remember is you can't use any < > marks within the story such as:

<Go left!> Jean communicated to Scott telepathically.

HTML looks at those < > marks as tag marks and will ignore them, AND the words in them.

HTML works in tags, usually paired tags but not always. A beginning tag is plain, an ending tag has a slash in it, such as <I>italics </I>

To begin a paragraph, you mark it with a <P> You don't have to use an ending tag, but if you want to, this is what it would look like.

<P>Gambit found it amazing that she would even show up. "What, you t'ink you can just walk in de door an' I'm gonna forgive you? It don' work like that, Chere."</P>

What I've just told you are the two most important things to submitting HTML work for this site. If you just begin your paragraphs with a <P> mark and don't use any < > marks to "highlight" certain words, you've saved me a bundle of time and effort, and I will be happy to archive your story.

Below, are ways to make your document look even better, if you're interested. These are optional things.

Now, let's say you want to get fancy. Sure, those *marks* do help with text to make the story stand out, but you don't want that. You want the story to look as good as it would in a book. You want to use italics and bold marks, maybe even an underline or two. It's simple

<I>Italics</I>

Your browser will show it as:

Italics

<B>Bold</B>

Bold

<U>Underlined</U>

Underlined

Just always remember when using bold, italics, and underlined marks, to include the beginning tag, and the closing tag. If you forget the closing tag, you'll end up having the whole rest of the document in italics, bold, etc.

Now, let's say you want to get even fancier. Let's say you want to have a word in italics and bold. It can be done. It's called "nesting" tags.

<I><B>This would make this sentence show up in your browser as both bold and italic</B></I>

So it will look like this:

This would make this sentence show up in your browser as both bold and italic

Just remember, the tag on the outside of the beginning should be at the end. Therefore:

<I><B>This is correct</B></I>

and

<I><B>This is not.</I></B>

So, let's take a look at a section of story that has been "HTML-ized"

This is how it will look in "code":

<P>Gambit found it amazing that she would even show up. "What, you t'ink you can just walk in de door an' I'm gonna <I>forgive</I> you? It don' work like that, Chere."</P>

<P>"Did it ever occur to you that I'm not here to beg for your <I>forgiveness?</I>" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "Maybe I'm here to forgive <I><B>you</B></I>."</P>

And this is how it will show up in a browser:

Gambit found it amazing that she would even show up. "What, you t'ink you can just walk in de door an' I'm gonna forgive you? It don' work like that, Chere."

"Did it ever occur to you that I'm not here to beg for your forgiveness?" she asked, her eyes narrowing. "Maybe I'm here to forgive you."

Now, let's say you want to center something. Use the center tags. For an opening center tag, there must be a closing one:

<CENTER>This is centered</CENTER>

And it shows up in a browser looking like this:

You can even use other tags in center tags too:

<CENTER><B>This is bold and centered</B></CENTER>

Now, in a browser it will show up looking like this:

Now, let's say you want to do the title for your page. You want it to be big and bold. It's not hard, use a Header tag.

<H1>This Is The Title Of The Story</H1>

And this is how it will show up in your browser.

This Is The Title Of The Story

Nice huh? Big and bold. If you want to make it a little smaller, you can use H2, all the way up to H6. H6 is pretty small.

You can center header tags. It will look like this in code:

<CENTER><H1>tThis Is The Title Of The Story</H1></CENTER>

And this is how it will show up in the browser:

Remember to always close header tags though, with the / mark, otherwise the whole document will show up in big huge letters. Icky.

Now, let's say you want to have something that breaks off at certain points. Like a poem. End each line with <BR>

Example:

Roses are red<BR>
Violets are blue<BR>
Sugar is sweet<BR>
And so are you.<BR>

This will show up in the browser, with the lines ending where you put the <BR> tag. It will look like this:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

You do NOT need to have an ending tag for <BR> (Short for break) There is no </BR> Tag.

Also, by using the <BR> tag, you won't have a line skipped. The way HTML knows a new paragraph is to skip a line. With <BR> it knows just to break of the one line and start another. There are no "tabs" to show new paragraphs in HTML.

This should be more than enough to start anyone with HTML-ing their stories enough to send them to me for archiving. If you have any specific questions, ask me.

If you're interested in learning more about HTML, there are many sites on the web that can give you all sorts of advice. Check with Yahoo or Altavista to find them. If I can remember any, I'll let you know.

I do all my HTML work with a regular WP program, and HOTDOG HTML editor. Hotdog is a fantastic program to work with and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about HTML, or who wants to play with learning it.

You can download a trial version of Hotdog from their web site:

This page was created with the Hot Dog Pro Web Page Editor

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