Posting Lyrics with Line Breaks

Here's how to put line breaks in lyrics you type up in Microsoft Word. The process should be much the same in other word processors.

• Type the lyrics up and edit and spell-check and save them.
  
• Then, go to the "edit" menu at the top of your page, and choose "replace."
  
• Under "replace" you'll find a "special" designation for special characters. Choose "paragraph mark" and put that in the "find" box.
  
• Then, in the "replace with" box, put "paragraph mark" and <br> (a line break tag)
  
• Then choose "replace all."

This varies from one version of Word to another, but it's more-or-less the same in the various versions.

You want to replace the paragraph mark with another one PLUS the line break. Otherwise, you lose all your paragraph marks and what you see on your screen is hard to read, and hard to work with.

Remember, when you are posting lyrics, you want to have <br> line breaks in each and every line, including the blank lines between stanzas and in the paragraphs for any comments you might want to make along with the lyrics. Please do NOT use <p> paragraph marks, because paragraph marks often don't work correctly when you copy-and-paste lyrics from the Forum into a word processor.

When all the line breaks are just how you want them, highlight the whole thing in your word processor and copy it ( [CTRL-C] is the keyboard shortcut for copying) then paste [CTRL-V] it into the message box at Mudcat, and then hit the grey "submit message" button.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Assuming you are using Windows 95 or 98 and Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, here's what you do:

• highlight the section you want to copy - put your mouse cursor at the beginning of the section, and click and hold the left mouse button. Then, holding the button, move the cursor to the end of the section, and release your mouse button. All the text you've selected should have changed color, usually to blue.
• Next, copy the test - move your mouse cursor so it's ove the highlighted area, and click and hold your right mouse button. A menu will pop up, and you should select "copy" from the menu. The menu will disappear, and the information will be copied into your computer's memory (clipboard), and stay there until you copy something else.
• Finally, paste the information wherever you want to put it - into a Mudcat message box, a word processing document, or an e-mail message you're writing. To paste, move your mouse cursor to the place where you want to put the information. then, click on your right mouse button again and select "paste" from the menu. That should do the trick for you.

I often like to use keyboard shortcuts instead of using my mouse to find things from menus. Here are some handy shortcuts:

• CTRL-C - Copy
• CTRL-V - Paste
• CTRL-X - Cut
• CTRL-S - Save
• CTRL-N - Open New Browser Window
• CTRL-Z - Undo whatever you did last

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By the way, note that this thread is primarily to be used as a reference and a place for people to post HTML questions and get answers. There are always several HTML Practice threads going, or feel free to start a new practice thread if you'd like to experiment. Practice all you want in the practice threads. We go through them occasionally and delete old messages.
Thanks.
-Joe Offer-