Why do I lose one space from every line when I cut and paste from Writer to internet forums?

[MattQ]

I post poetry on poetry forums on the web (there, my shameful secret is out).

When I compose in Libre Office Writer then cut and paste the poem into the forum editor, everything looks fine in the editor. Then, when I post my poem, it appears with one space missing from each and every line (so that two words on every line are joined together). This being poetry, each line is terminated with a carriage return / new line. The forums I use are both powered by VBulletin.

Any ideas on why this is and how I might avoid it? It doesn’t happen if I cut and paste from Word or notepad or Gmail to the forum. Presumably it’s some hidden formatting character that LO uses and VBulletin reads differently. I don’t have the problem if I cut and paste to Facebook. So maybe it’s just a one-off unlucky incompatibility between the two. Anyone else experience anything like this? Anyone have any workarounds?

Thanks for any help.

Matt

[librebel]

Hello @MattQ,

If possible, please upload a sample document plus a screenshot of how it looks in the VBulletin forum.

[MattQ]

Thanks, librerebel, I’ve found a solution now (see below). Formatting the document as “pre-formatted text” solved the problem.

[Grantler]

workarounds

You could replace (Edit menu, Find & Replace, Replace all) the regular space by a Non-breaking space (ctrl+shift+space). The problem will be that you will generate very long words without “natural” break (hyphenation) within lines. But if your verses are not too long it won’t be a problem. Note: I would call this workaround ‘quick and dirty’.

PS: Telling the website where to find the mentioned problem would be a good service for helpers.

[MattQ]

EDIT: SOLUTION FOUND.

In the Writer document, select the relevant text, then in the “Styles” menu select “Preformatted text”. Presumably this clears whatever formatting character that Writer is using that is confusing VBulletin. Cut-and-pasted into the VBulletin editor it looks double line-spaced, but once actually posted to the forum it’s normally line-spaced, and there is no longer any problem with spaces being lost from lines.

Hi Grantler.

Thanks for your suggestion. The non-breaking-space (NBS) does work, and would be a rough-and-ready workaround in most cases (longer lines may be a problem). I couldn’t type ctrl+shift+space into “replace” box of find-and-replace (which leads instead to a NBS appearing at the current cursor position in the document itself), but I could insert a NBS into the document and then cut-and-past that into the replace box, and that worked fine.

To answer you P.S. I can’t really point you to an example online, since when I post a poem on a forum and this happens inevitably I reinsert the spaces so people can read the poem properly. Here’s what happens though with the first four lines of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I took it from the web, pasted it into Writer and then cleared the original formatting, then posted it to the forum. I’ve put slashes in to show where the line-breaks are, since this site doesn’t seem happy with line breaks that aren’t new paragraphs!

When in thechronicle of wasted time /
I see descriptions of the fairestwights, /
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme /
In praise ofladies dead, and lovely knights, /

Oddly enough, when I just cut and pasted from the web into Writer and didn’t clear the formatting, then posted it to the forum, I got this.

Whenin the chronicle of wasted time /
Isee descriptions of the fairest wights, /
Andbeauty making beautiful old rhyme /
Inpraise of ladies dead, and lovely knights, /

Weird huh?

Thanks again,

Matt