WAAPT:Formatting Tips

If you are new to WAAPT, you may wonder what posting format we demand for RPing. Truth is, we don't care. Use whatever posting style you feel best gets your ideas across; for many of us, that happens to be script, but longform posting is entirely welcome. The important matter is making your posts readable.

Basic Readability

The most important contribution to readability is spacing. There's no special markup to remember for this, just as a general rule remember that it's easier for most people to read a few small paragraphs instead of one big one.

In particular, you might want to start a new paragraph when you introduce an important thought or detail, even if you are still in a description section and haven't reached any action or dialogue.

"Dialogue! How should I handle dialogue?" asked one reader of this section at a very opportune time. "I don't mind if you use my question as an exampl- oh, I see, when dialogue begins you should start it on its own line, but you can then continue the quote in the same paragraph after identifying the speaker."

"However!" I butted in, "when the speaker changes you should absolutely start a new block of text! It's easy for different people to run together otherwise, and nobody wants that. Just ask Alphys."

I was subsequently pelted with a number of shoes, tomatoes, and snakes for my joke in poor taste, providing an opportunity to demonstrate how in longform format, description doesn't need to be set off from dialogue in any special way.

Basket, the Tropius: <That's all well and good, but many people prefer script format!>

<After all, it can be more eyecatching, and you don't need to think up a million synonyms for "he said"!>

<If you do that, however, it is a very good idea to make the speaker's name bold, by using triple-single quotes. Like so:>

'''Basket:''' <Look ma! My name will be bolded when this markup is saved!>

She flared her leaf-wings dramatically, providing an opportunity to demonstrate that in script format, it's usually a good idea to visually separate dialogue from description text, since human speech is frequently left bare without handy <> quotes like Pokémon have.

As she flew off into the night, she showed how to italicize text with double-single-quotes:

''Basket glided through the moonlight, confident that this italicized description would earn her coolness points with the kids.''

-unfortunately for her, the kids all just used dashes to set off their descriptions instead-

-hey, it's two less characters to type!-