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January 24, 2011 8:17 AM Subscribe
Is there an easy, quick way in Word to convert a large amount of block paragraphs (like we have on teh internets) to the sort of paragraphs one sees in print with indents and no space between said paragraphs?
I have a novel-length story that I posted on an online site. It was pretty successful, and after a lot of encouragement and a few author friends, I've decided I should take a stab at submitting it to some publishers.
However, the site that it went up on was all block style paragraphs. I started writing it out like that. Am I going to have to go through and manually convert it to a print-friendly format, or is there some function on Word that will do it for me without screwing up all the spacing and such?
I have a novel-length story that I posted on an online site. It was pretty successful, and after a lot of encouragement and a few author friends, I've decided I should take a stab at submitting it to some publishers.
However, the site that it went up on was all block style paragraphs. I started writing it out like that. Am I going to have to go through and manually convert it to a print-friendly format, or is there some function on Word that will do it for me without screwing up all the spacing and such?
I'd set up a style to format the text the way you want it (go to format > style > new), then paste special > unformatted, then select all the text and apply the style.
posted by nerdfish at 8:25 AM on January 24, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by nerdfish at 8:25 AM on January 24, 2011 [2 favorites]
Is there a manual space between each paragraph? Or is it just that the text is currently enclosed in [p][/p] tags? If it's the former situation, you're going to need to do a find and replace (find: ^p^p, replace with: ^p^t), and if it's the latter, then you just need to fiddle with spacing.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:26 AM on January 24, 2011
posted by ocherdraco at 8:26 AM on January 24, 2011
Response by poster: Argh. It is, sadly, not Word 2007. It's all on my home computer and I'm at work, so I'm not positively sure...I believe it was whichever version was mostly common before 2007 came out.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:28 AM on January 24, 2011
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:28 AM on January 24, 2011
You could do a find and replace on the HTML code, converting your [p]s to indented [p]s, then copy and paste from the webpage output to Word and hope for the best.
I think your version of Word might allow you to view the Word-style source code for your documents. That always made my life easier when attempting weird conversions like this in the past. (Then again, I could be thinking of WordPerfect.)
posted by AugieAugustus at 8:38 AM on January 24, 2011
I think your version of Word might allow you to view the Word-style source code for your documents. That always made my life easier when attempting weird conversions like this in the past. (Then again, I could be thinking of WordPerfect.)
posted by AugieAugustus at 8:38 AM on January 24, 2011
If you wrote it in Word and used styles correctly, it's trivial to change the format of the style. Block paragraphs can be converted into indented paragraphs just by changing the spacing settings on the Normal style.
posted by turkeyphant at 8:48 AM on January 24, 2011
posted by turkeyphant at 8:48 AM on January 24, 2011
Perhaps I'm mis-understanding the question... but I would copy the text from the web browser, open up Notepad, and paste it. This will strip ALL formatting... then copy the whole thing again, and paste it into Word.
posted by MikeWarot at 9:29 AM on January 24, 2011
posted by MikeWarot at 9:29 AM on January 24, 2011
Response by poster: I'm just looking for the easiest way to clean all this up. I'll probably try several of these methods.
I originally wrote it all in MS Word using block paragraphs manually -- I didn't indent (tab), and I put in the space between paragraphs manually. Then I cut & pasted everything into the website's submission field. Then I had to manually go through and put in italics where necessary.
Really, I'm just hoping to go back and create a new version identical to the way it would be printed with the least possible amount of work. I'll do it all manually if I have to, but I keep thinking there has to be an easier way.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on January 24, 2011
I originally wrote it all in MS Word using block paragraphs manually -- I didn't indent (tab), and I put in the space between paragraphs manually. Then I cut & pasted everything into the website's submission field. Then I had to manually go through and put in italics where necessary.
Really, I'm just hoping to go back and create a new version identical to the way it would be printed with the least possible amount of work. I'll do it all manually if I have to, but I keep thinking there has to be an easier way.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on January 24, 2011
open the page up in Microsoft Explorer and copy the text. Open up word and paste. It should have all the formatting and para breaks already.
if that doesn't work, do what ocherdraco said and run search and replace.
it's an easy fix.
posted by elle.jeezy at 9:52 AM on January 24, 2011
if that doesn't work, do what ocherdraco said and run search and replace.
it's an easy fix.
posted by elle.jeezy at 9:52 AM on January 24, 2011
What ocherdraco said: if you still have the original, find and replace all ^p^p with ^p^t should do it. Beware of odd things happening to chapter/section breaks, but otherwise it'll probably be fine.
posted by Lebannen at 10:22 AM on January 24, 2011
posted by Lebannen at 10:22 AM on January 24, 2011
scaryblackdeath: "I originally wrote it all in MS Word using block paragraphs manually -- I didn't indent (tab), and I put in the space between paragraphs manually."
Do you still have the original Word file? It's a shame you didn't put the space in between the paragraphs correctly but it'll still be quicker to change this with a find-replace than to mess around with the HTML formatted version.
Next time use the paragraph spacing feature in Word and this can be done in a couple of clicks.
posted by turkeyphant at 11:28 AM on January 24, 2011
Do you still have the original Word file? It's a shame you didn't put the space in between the paragraphs correctly but it'll still be quicker to change this with a find-replace than to mess around with the HTML formatted version.
Next time use the paragraph spacing feature in Word and this can be done in a couple of clicks.
posted by turkeyphant at 11:28 AM on January 24, 2011
I can fix it for you, if you'd like to send it to me. Email's in my profile.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 3:29 PM on January 24, 2011
posted by SuperSquirrel at 3:29 PM on January 24, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by troywestfield at 8:21 AM on January 24, 2011