Writing Writing Guide Part 2: How To Use The In-Built ScribbleHub Text Editor Effectively

Yorth

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Hello everyone, Shesmu here. This will be the second guide in a tutorial series to help you become a better writer, and the first step towards that goal is to understand the tools you’re given. In the last iteration, we have seen how to submit our story, what tag to use or not use, etc. In this one, we’ll take a look at the Scribblehub in-built text editor, and try to understand how to effectively use it.

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Here is a full look at Scribblehub’s text editor. As we can see, there is the title text field, the Add Poll tab, and then the actual text editor. For now, we’re not going to talk about the first two and just focus on the text editor. We will talk about polls later.

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Here, you can choose the type of text you’re going to type. You almost always want to set it as a paragraph. However, in case you’re too lazy to change the size and boldness on your own, you can choose one of those headings for your titles. Here is a comparison of all the headings and how they would look like in the actual chapter page.

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For bold, italic and underlined, these are features found in every other text editor, so I won’t be talking about them. However, one thing to note is that italic is used mainly for thoughts/monologues. Please do keep that in mind.

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For strikethrough, it just strikes through whatever word/sentence you highlighted. Example:

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These can be used for comedic effect, as in telling what a character really thinks as opposed to what he says. It’s much more direct and poignant than just having the character say something then jump into a monologue.

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The blockquote is a very useful tool, especially for stories with a rich lore. If you wanna quote some book in your universe or a legendary character and put it at the start of your chapter, or at the end, use blockquote. It would look something like this.

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For bulleted lists and numbered lists, you will rarely ever use them in a novel type story. But if you do, it’s your own choice, these are available in most text editors so I will assume that you already know how to use them. If you don’t, Google is your best friend.

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For alignment, you’ll almost always want to keep it at left. However, you could use center alignment for titles and poems. I have never seen the right alignment ever used in a story, but the option exists.
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Due to the limited amount of screenshots I can attach to a single post, I'll be posting the continuation of this guide as a comment.
 
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Yorth

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1568310220126.png


Next comes hyperlinks. For anyone who doesn’t know HTML or BBCode, this is your best friend. Whether it be a link to your website, to a Wikipedia article, or anything really, you would be using this option often. Once you click on it, this window pops up.

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If you notice, there is a blank space highlighted with blue. There, you can write what the readers will actually see. For the URL, or address of the site you want to link to, please paste it in text field that is provided for it. In the end, it will look something like this.

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For the undo buttons, just use ctrl+z and ctrl+y. If you ever delete something and then immediately regret it, just use ctrl+z, it will restore it back for you. For ctrl+y, it just does the opposite of ctrl+z, whatever ctrl+z deleted, it restores, whatever ctrl+z restored it deletes.

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The spoiler tag is very helpful. Other than its main function, which is hiding spoilers, it is also used to hide very long text or illustration. If you have an r rated scene and don’t want it to take up half of your chapter in terms of view, you can use the spoiler tag. If you have a lot of illustrations that you want your reader to look at, but don’t want them to just take over the chapter, you can use the spoiler tags. At the end of the day, it’s your choice what to use the spoiler tag on and what not to, but it is indeed a very useful tool.

Here is how spoiler tags look to your readers:

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The announcement tag works exactly like how you would think it would. It just makes a space for you to write an announcement. You probably want to do it at the start/end of your chapter. Overall, I haven’t seen this tag being used, but I can see its usefulness. Many authors dedicate full chapters to announcement when this simple tag does the job.

Here is a view of how it looks like to your readers:

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For the Author’s Note tag. This might be one of the most used tags out there. Most authors really want to interact with their community, want to know whether they like a character or not, whether they think the plot makes sense or not, and author’s notes were a great way to do it. Now, polls are a much more effective way of asking these questions since readers tend to vote more than they comment. However, many authors still use them to this day, because it gives a much more intimate feeling to their relationship with their readers.



Here is a view of how it looks like to your readers:

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Yorth

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Footnotes might be the most underused tags out there. There is a GREAT way to explain words and concepts to your readers seamlessly and without a need to go into an unrealistic long-winded explanation. They also do not suffer from the problems of traditional footnotes, where the reader have to scroll down to the author’s note, find the specific footnote, read the description, then scroll back to where he was. A simple click is all the reader needs to do look at your description and understand this foreign word you’re using.

Here is a view of how it looks like to your readers:

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Increase indent and decrease indent are just other words for tab. Use tab.

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Paste as text helps when you have a chapter/article that is full of links, but that for some reason you don’t want your readers to access. You just copy it from wherever you wrote it and paste it as text. Honestly, I see little use for this feature.

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Clear formatting is pretty useful. If for some reason, the text editor that you have been using isn’t compatible with Scribblehub’s, and that results in a royal mess, clear formatting just takes care of all of that stuff for you. It turns everything into plain text and then you can format it as you want using SH’s text editor.

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Special characters include, but are not limited to special European characters, math symbols, Greek symbols, card symbols, etc… Here is a full list of what it contains

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For text coloring, this is a feature available in every text editor out there, so I won’t be covering it here. If there is something you don’t understand, Google is your friend.

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Now here comes tables, every litrpg writer’s favorite tool. To create a table, just click on it, a menu will pop up, click on table and then choose how many columns and rows you want to have.

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Yorth

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That will create a table that looks like this.

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If you want to merge cells (which you will most likely want to do), just highlight the cells that you want to merge, go back to the table menu, click on cell, click on merge.

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Once you do that, the cells will merge. If you want to play around with the width, the borders and the color of the cell, you can click on table cell properties, and a window will pop up where you can let your creative mind go rampant.

For adding and deleting rows and columns, you can just click on them on the menu, another menu will pop up where you’ll be given those options.

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For keyboard shortcuts, you can use it to just link all of these features to keyboard shortcuts. I personally don’t use it. I don’t see any particular use for it other than saving a minimal amount of time. Nevertheless, the option is there.

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For insert image, it just lets you link to an image online, given you know the URL. You can also change the dimension and the border of the image. You can play around with it, especially if your work depends heavily on illustrations.

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Find and replace is an incredibly useful tool that essentially works as a better ctrl+f. It just lets you change every instance of a word and replace it with something else in one motion. It also lets you choose between whole words and matching cases.

Now that we’re done with the text editor features, let’s go back to the poll.

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Once you click on the Add poll tab, this panel shows up. As you can see, there are many options, so let’s take them one by one. First of all the question. I believe that everyone here knows what polls stand for, you ask a question with multiple choice and you let everyone vote on their favorite answer.

The text field for the question is clear, as, for the answers, you can just write them in the possible responses text field and click enter to have the option of making another poll choice.

Once you’re done with that, you can choose how many choices a voter can make. You can limit it to a single one, choose how many selectable responses are possible, or set it to unlimited.

Then, there come other options, but I believe those are self-explanatory, so I won’t be going over them.

With that, I mark the end of this second guide in the Scribblehub Writing tutorial series. The next guide will be pertaining more to how to actually write a story rather than just how to publish it, so stay tuned for that.
 

IvyVeritas

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For new writers, I would add the recommendation that you shouldn't do your actual writing on ScribbleHub. You should do your writing and maintain all your files on your own computer (plus offsite backups, if possible), and then copy and paste into the ScribbleHub editor, and fix any formatting that gets lost.

Your writing is yours, and you don't want to be wholly dependent on a third-party website to maintain it. Plus, you want it to be as flexible as possible to deliver in other ways.

My personal favorite tool for writing is Scrivener. It copies and pastes well into the ScribbleHub editor (it retains italics, though I do need to re-insert scene breaks). A lot of people use Word, since that's what publishers and agents are used to receiving.
 

tak

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If i may add, some features are not available on mobile... At least the dividing line is gone, not sure about the rest
 

Clo

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Is there a way to have the table background match the "sheet"? It seems to default to a light blue, and use that for both light and dark theme.
In my case, I want to use table mostly for the ability to have Right- and Left-aligned text in a narrower interface, in order to imitate Google Hangout or SMS messaging. The background doesn't bother me too much, and I could just force a specific color, but I would like to force it to "invisible", which I can't figure out if there's an easy way to do so.
 

AliceShiki

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Is there a way to have the table background match the "sheet"? It seems to default to a light blue, and use that for both light and dark theme.
In my case, I want to use table mostly for the ability to have Right- and Left-aligned text in a narrower interface, in order to imitate Google Hangout or SMS messaging. The background doesn't bother me too much, and I could just force a specific color, but I would like to force it to "invisible", which I can't figure out if there's an easy way to do so.
Invisible color isn't possible atm because the color editor forces the # in the Hexcode. You need the TRANSPARENT color to make invisible text, but you can only write #TRANSPARENT in the editor, which does... Well, nothing.
 

Clo

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Thanks for the answer! I suppose I can leave it like that, it's not TOO much of an eyesore.
 

Jemini

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Is there a way to insert an image from your computer it it is not on the internet?
 

Lacy

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Hi, maybe there's another thread for this, but I can't seem to find one. I'm rather new to using Scribblehub Text Editor and am having some trouble with the table feature. I half-expected for copying and pasting my work from where I first write my chapter (Google Docs, Word, etc) to another (Scribblehub Text Editor) that not all formatting would work, including the table, and I eventually managed to make a functioning table for one chapter. However, I am also unable to copy and paste one section of a table from one Scribblehub Text Editor chapter to another, which means that I have to manually do each and every one. This is a hassle, but I can do it. However, I have encountered many problems in making a table, and I'm honestly not sure how I succeeded the first time. I will give an example of a problem:

This is an unaltered table as I currently trying to work with it:

Screenshot (1290).png


This is what happens when I try to align the table itself to the center and am looking at it in Scribblehub Text Editor. This is bizarre and not really usable:

Screenshot (1291).png


But this is what happens when I look at the center-aligned table in preview (which is kind of what I want to happen):

Screenshot (1292).png


However, when I tried putting in letters and seeing how it showed up in preview, this happened:

Screenshot (1294).png


This is just an example. Some other stuff include: when I try to copy and paste over the advanced settings for the table, cell, and row properties from the good table in the published chapter, I am left with something different; bizarre things frequently happen; sometimes my actions are ignored; and each time I attempt to edit a table, I return to the top of the chapter for some reason.

As a result of all of these things, I am very confused and perhaps mildly cursed. Am I messing up? Is there a thread where how to use the table is broken down in more detail, and I just don't know about it? Alternatively, is there a senpai out there who would be kind enough to make one?
 

Yorth

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Hi, maybe there's another thread for this, but I can't seem to find one. I'm rather new to using Scribblehub Text Editor and am having some trouble with the table feature. I half-expected for copying and pasting my work from where I first write my chapter (Google Docs, Word, etc) to another (Scribblehub Text Editor) that not all formatting would work, including the table, and I eventually managed to make a functioning table for one chapter. However, I am also unable to copy and paste one section of a table from one Scribblehub Text Editor chapter to another, which means that I have to manually do each and every one. This is a hassle, but I can do it. However, I have encountered many problems in making a table, and I'm honestly not sure how I succeeded the first time. I will give an example of a problem:

This is an unaltered table as I currently trying to work with it:

View attachment 2874

This is what happens when I try to align the table itself to the center and am looking at it in Scribblehub Text Editor. This is bizarre and not really usable:

View attachment 2876

But this is what happens when I look at the center-aligned table in preview (which is kind of what I want to happen):

View attachment 2875

However, when I tried putting in letters and seeing how it showed up in preview, this happened:

View attachment 2877

This is just an example. Some other stuff include: when I try to copy and paste over the advanced settings for the table, cell, and row properties from the good table in the published chapter, I am left with something different; bizarre things frequently happen; sometimes my actions are ignored; and each time I attempt to edit a table, I return to the top of the chapter for some reason.

As a result of all of these things, I am very confused and perhaps mildly cursed. Am I messing up? Is there a thread where how to use the table is broken down in more detail, and I just don't know about it? Alternatively, is there a senpai out there who would be kind enough to make one?

I honestly have never seen anything quite like this. Can you tell me which table-border type are you using?
 

Lacy

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I honestly have never seen anything quite like this. Can you tell me which table-border type are you using?
The table-border style is currently double. As an addendum, in the advanced table properties area, the 'Style' I currently have for this is: 'height: 48px; width: 50%; border-collapse: collapse; border-color: #000000; background-color: #2733b8; border-style: double;'. The table cell properties has this in Style: 'width: 50%; height: 24px; border-style: solid; border-color: #000000; text-align: center;'. The table row properties has this in Style: 'border-style: solid; border-color: #000000;'.
 
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Saileri

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Is there a way to insert an image from your computer it it is not on the internet?

Kinda digging old graves, but I use a decent workaround to not have to upload shit on random hosting portals. I created an empty private group chat on Discord with only myself in it, named it "Image Dump" and throw there images I want to share with others or in my stories. After uploading an image in the Discord chat it becomes "public" and you can right-click on it and grab the link. It will work when used with the upload image via link function in Scribble and also in every other site. Naturally, don't use that method for any critical or personal information.
 

HeavenMemory

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Hello guys! I'm a new creator here in scribble hub and I am trying to post my novel using the 'Creator' tab. However, once I submit or click on 'Add series' it gives me an error that says, 'This site can't be reach.' (Please see attached file).

How can I go about this? Please help. Thanks!
 

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sak-chii

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Hello guys! I'm a new creator here in scribble hub and I am trying to post my novel using the 'Creator' tab. However, once I submit or click on 'Add series' it gives me an error that says, 'This site can't be reach.' (Please see attached file).

How can I go about this? Please help. Thanks!


Have u tried refreshing the page? It might be down or sth

Also, u might be able to get faster response in the SH server
 

sak-chii

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Hello guys! I'm a new creator here in scribble hub and I am trying to post my novel using the 'Creator' tab. However, once I submit or click on 'Add series' it gives me an error that says, 'This site can't be reach.' (Please see attached file).

How can I go about this? Please help. Thanks!

Try another browser? I never create new series through phone but on laptop so.. :blob_hmm:
 
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