Hard Line Breaks

Article Writing & Marketing Insights

Hard Line Breaks

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Wooooh there Nelly! Ease up and don’t include any hard line breaks in any article you submit to us. For experienced writers, they know this already, but a few folks from the early days still send in hard line breaks in their articles.

Here’s why: Because your article might look bad on our site because we are optimized for no hard line breaks (better to just let each sentence wrap) and more importantly:

Smart publishers have software to change the line breaks automatically and when you decide what the hard line break default should be (let’s say you choose 55 characters per line), you take away power from the publisher to make that decision and thus, you make more work for them having to reformat your article, line by line to fit their editorial standards for hard line breaks, if any.

Posted by Christopher M. Knight on February 24, 2006 at 11:42 am

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5 Comments »

Caroline writes:

Question:

“No hardline breaks”

For us newbies…what is that EXACTLY?
Is that NOT setting your lines for 55-60 characters?

Wrap around drives me crazy…keep having to scroll left to right.

Are you suggesting ‘no hard lines’ JUST for articles being sent ezine publishers.

Hate to look like a know nothing but
I want to make it as easy as possible for everyone yet not have to scroll left to right.

Thanks for your knowledge and time.

Caroline, L.E.
LOVE’S Electrician
Reaching into people’s hearts to turn their light on!

Comment provided March 3, 2006 at 10:12 am

Chris Knight writes:

Caroline,

It means to not hit enter after so many characters, but rather just let your sentences flow into one solid paragraph of 3-7 sentences max.

If I adjusted the above paragraph to a hard line break rate of ~35 characters, here is what it would have looked liked:

It means to not hit enter after so
many characters, but rather just
let your sentences flow into one
solid paragraph of 3-7 sentences
max.

And what I’m saying is to NOT do this. Just let your sentences naturally wrap, ok? :)

Comment provided March 3, 2006 at 11:16 am

Linda Meckler writes:

I am confused. I try to let my sentences wrap naturally but I like to list individual items for attention. I place a double space between each item. Is that okay or not?

Linda Meckler

Comment provided March 3, 2006 at 1:20 pm

Wally, Managing Editor writes:

Hi Linda,

Thought I would chime in here on your question.

Two ways to create a list of items:

1) After each item or sentence of your list, add an HTML break tag: &lt BR &gt

2) Use the bulledted list HTML code/tags. Chris had written an article awhile back on HTML for article writers that has an example of how to use bulleted list HTML code/tags to create lists: http://ezinearticles.com/?Essential-HTML-Skills-For-Article-Authors—7-Tips&id=7185

Hope this helps.

Comment provided March 3, 2006 at 9:26 pm

ellen writes:

Is it Ok to use HTML to create space where I might want it, as in the code for ‘insert line break’ [which shows up as a ‘?’ when i typed it here.]
thanks
ellen

Comment provided March 7, 2006 at 9:57 am

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