If you're like me, you'd like your posted fic to look as much like published fiction as possible. Of course, that means indenting the first line of most paragraphs.

So not:

Their professor sat at the edge of his desk; his gentle eyes surveyed the room before returning their attention back upon Rose.

Professor Longbottom wasn’t the resident TILTS (Teacher I’d Love To Snog) — that honour went to the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T.-level Divination teacher, Professor Asunción Pereira Oliveira da Silva from Portugal — but Albus didn’t understand why not, especially when Neville was framed as he was now: eyes twinkling, hair a sparkling deep chocolate with the faintest hint of red; and forearms — dear Merlin, those forearms! — and, connected to them, biceps; and connected to them, shoulders.

Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

But:

Their professor sat at the edge of his desk; his gentle eyes surveyed the room before returning their attention back upon Rose.

Professor Longbottom wasn’t the resident TILTS (Teacher I’d Love To Snog) — that honour went to the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T.-level Divination teacher, Professor Asunción Pereira Oliveira da Silva from Portugal — but Albus didn’t understand why not, especially when Neville was framed as he was now: eyes twinkling, hair a sparkling deep chocolate with the faintest hint of red; and forearms — dear Merlin, those forearms! — and, connected to them, biceps; and connected to them, shoulders.

Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

So... how can we do it?

Most people do the non-breaking space hack. They copy and paste this code five-to-six times, depending on how much of an indent they want:  . So they're bloated mark-up looks like this:

       Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

which would give you the same effect as:

      Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

It looks the same to the end-user (the reader), but who wants to deal with paragraphs and paragraphs of text littered with  ...?!?! Not me.

Here's a simpler way to do it.

<p style="text-indent: 30px;">Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?</p>

That produces:

Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

Now, you can do this really quickly by making sure your paragraphs all have the <p> tags on them, then you can do a simple FIND & REPLACE with Word -- or whatever word processing program you use -- and replace all of the <p> tags with <p style="text-indent: 30px;"> tags.

But wait!

There's an even easier way!

Make sure all of your paragraphs have the <p> tag.

At the beginning of the story, after all of your heading information (author, title, warnings, etc.), type this:

<div style="text-indent: 30px">

Then paste in your story, making sure that the <p> tags are at the beginning of every paragraph that you want to indent.

At the end of the story -- no matter how long it is -- type in: </div>, which is a 'closing tag'.
Explanation: The P tag is a CHILD of the the DIV tag. The DIV tag wraps around the story like a loving mother hugging her child. And, like a child would inherit some things from its mother, so too will the P tag inherit some things from its mother. Fortunately, the text-indent is one of the things the P tag can inherit! So every P tag wrapped in the loving embrace of its <div style="text-indent: 30px"> </div > mother, will inherit the indention.

Don't believe me?

Their professor sat at the edge of his desk; his gentle eyes surveyed the room before returning their attention back upon Rose.

Professor Longbottom wasn’t the resident TILTS (Teacher I’d Love To Snog) — that honour went to the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T.-level Divination teacher, Professor Asunción Pereira Oliveira da Silva from Portugal — but Albus didn’t understand why not, especially when Neville was framed as he was now: eyes twinkling, hair a sparkling deep chocolate with the faintest hint of red; and forearms — dear Merlin, those forearms! — and, connected to them, biceps; and connected to them, shoulders.

Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?

Voila!

I just did it.

And it just worked. This is all I typed.

<div style="text-indent: 30px"><p>Their professor sat at the edge of his desk; his gentle eyes surveyed the room before returning their attention back upon Rose.</p><p>Professor Longbottom wasn’t the resident TILTS (Teacher I’d Love To Snog) — that honour went to the O.W.L. and N.E.W.T.-level Divination teacher, Professor Asunción Pereira Oliveira da Silva from Portugal — but Albus didn’t understand why not, especially when Neville was framed as he was now: eyes twinkling, hair a sparkling deep chocolate with the faintest hint of red; and forearms — dear Merlin, those forearms! — and, connected to them, biceps; and connected to them, shoulders.</p><p>Who would have ever thought that gardening could be so good for one’s health?</p></div>

There's an even easier method for doing this, but it involves going into your Edit Journal Customizations and mucking about in the CSS code [which isn't that difficult, really], but some people may feel a bit leery of playing with it. If you want, however, I can show you how. It really is easier than it sounds!

Hope this helps some folks!

( Bulleted, Numbered, Definition Lists )

♥ 33 Members and 50 Watchers! ♥Warm welcome to everyone who joined fandom_how_to. Hopefully at least one thing from this comm was useful somehow :) :

The latest news are that Kira Takenouchi (she started Yaoi House and YAOI Underground) has found God. The third Taming Riki book will not be finished.

*UPDATE* Kira is back at:
http://www.kiratakenouchi.com/
where only her fiction will be posted for now. Taming Riki book will be finished by Kira.

other authors seem to go with a newly created SL Publishing Group:
https://slpublishinggroup.com/site/index.php

This topic is about fandom ethics and it might cause agreements and disagreements. I decided to make a poll out of it so everyone could voice their opinion.

Logging IP addresses is an anti-harassment feature. Should they be logged, when and why? Personally, I dislike needless IP collections and won't comment in most journals what collect them. I may comment in communities which log IP addresses of registered users, but still dislike it.

So, what are the fandom ethics about logging IP addresses of registered users by journal owners users? Are there any rules? (All journals, IJ, LJ, any other Jay)
[This poll is linked to hp_polls]

*EDIT* You can always change your vote if you voted too fast and made a mistake.
Press: Poll #1117
and then press: [ Fill out Poll ]
Fix errors and press: Submit Poll

If you wish to practice editing polls of all five types available at IJ, go to the Test Poll posted at hp_polls


( Logging IP Addresses of Registered Users )

♥ 20 Members and 30 Watchers! ♥
Amazing! This comm is growing fast, wow :) 
Huge thank you to everyone who joined fandom_how_to:

♥ 13 Members and 20 Watchers! ♥

Thank You!

Request a new tag(s) for your entry here.

Hello and welcome :)
This is a first post to fandom_how_to and I would appreciate any advice on this one. Especially from techy people. I would like to hear from writers who had to solve problems with their journals and how they did it. Anyone who writes fanfiction and/or originals is welcome to participate. The point is to help each other, I suppose :) Any advice on what we need to include in this comm would be greatly appreciated because I am such a nOOb *slaps self* But seriously, concrit is desired and just dropping by to say "hello" is great.

Introduce yourself and pimp your journals and comms in comments to this post :)

madlodger_007