User blog comment:ImGonnaBeThatGuy/How to be a Good Editor (Featuring Blarrgy and Num-Num)/@comment-5269370-20131213111953

Okay, so while Num-Num was busy making bad edits and watching Grown Ups 2, he also forgot about BAD FORMATTING! Here, myself and Blarrgy, will point out to you a few ways in how to make pastas look clean and presentable!

Okay so first off, what's wrong with this pasta's formatting?



Well, off the bat, that image is WAAAAAAAAY too big. Seriously. An image that has no real contribution to the pasta other than presentation or a representation of something in the story shouldn't be that big. Honestly.

Second of all, do you notice how squished the first and second paragraphs looks as opposed to the second and third ones?



That is because in Source Mode, the image is actually attached to the text. 9 times outta 10 this occurs because Num-Num added the image into the text using Visual Mode. Doing this can (and will) create sloppy formatting errors, such as:
 * Breaks in text


 * AND


 * Squashed paragraphs

Right, so let's fix this!



This wonderful place is called Source Mode. It may look difficult and discouraging at first, but once you get used to it, you'll never ever know how you edited without it!

Notice how the code for the image is attached to the text, as I mentioned earlier? We need to fix this. Like so.



So that means separating the text by one or two lines. Either one is fine, whichever you prefer, really. Don't go anymore than though, because it starts to create a gaping margin at the top, which looks untidy.

Let's reduce that image size while we're at it!



200px looks good to. Remember to always switch back between Source Mode and Visual Mode when reducing an image size and/or moving an image, to get a brief idea on how it will look when it is published.

Let's have a look at that article now!



Wow! What a difference! Doesn't that look so much better! The image doesn't take up half the page, and the paragraphs aren't squashed anymore! Thank you, Blarrgy, for helping us show what good formatting looks like.

NEXT UP ISSSSSSS

VISUAL MODE ERRORS

These are the spawn of Satan himself. This is when Num-Num, pastes a document from either Microsoft Word, or a source from the internet such as 4chan (shudders) or reddit, into Visual Mode rather than Source Mode.

Let's have a look:



You're probably thinking to yourself "What're ya tryna geddat here Crashy? Looks fine to me."

Ah. Wrong.



"OH GOD IT'S HIDEOUS WHHY IS THIS HAPPENING HEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPPPP KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT DIIIEEEEEEEE"


 * ahem*

See all that " " and "

" dribble that doesn't need to be there? Get rid of it. It may be harmless now, but look at what one little mistake could do to that document.



You see that? Some poor, unsuspecting fool could be harmlessly reading some good ol' pastas and then BAM! That jumps off the page and attacks them. Seriously, that is the probably the least damage you'll see that pasting a document into Visual Mode an do. Other times it has seriously disrupted paragraph structure, change the colour of the text, change the font of the text, and has even covered the WHOLE article with the coding it creates in Source Mode.

Here's the easiest way to fix it:



Copy the whole article, while making sure NO photos have been copied along with it, select "cut" cutting all the text from Visual Mode, and paste what you have into Source Mode. When you're finished, it should look something like this:



Seriously, doesn't that look so much nicer? Plus there's now basically no risk of ruining the whole article with one little slip up. Making sure that every article on this website is clean in both Source Mode and Visual Mode is important.

THERE IS ALWAYS ONE EXCEPTION THOUGH AND THIS IS IT:

Some contributors like to align their text to the right or in the centre when they create stories, like so:



For centered text, this comes up in Source Mode as:



Or for text that's aligned to the right:



IF IN SOURCE MODE YOU SEE TEXT CODED WITH THESE EITHER OF THESE TWO CODES, DO NOT REMOVE THEM UNLESS YOU HAVE THE AUTHOR'S CONSENT OR IT REALLY DISRUPTS THE FORMATTING (and i mean rly)

If you have any other questions regarding formatting of articles I'll be happy to answer them here for you :) I have more editing tips that I will post later, but first I need to make a list of them all and make sure I get them all into this planned Thread (no point of putting in tips and leaving out some, now is there? That's a Num-Num thing to do.)