If you're on the competition selector page in the dashboard, and you can't see it, then just scroll down.
Developing a bespoke site is hard. You can think of everything, but you can never think of everything... If that makes sense.
We tested, and tested, and tested, but things will always be a little rocky at first. We're working hard to refine and streamline the system, but for now, here's a little explanation.
When you click on a competition to submit from our 'Competitions' page, you'll be taken straight to the text editor. Brilliant. All you have to do then is paste your entry into the editor field. We recommend using 'Ctrl+Shift+V' or 'Command+Shift+V' if you're in a Mac, to paste it without formatting. That way, you can manually make sure all the formatting is exactly how it should be. We recommend putting together your piece in the 'My Drafts' section and then submitting from there if you've got the time. How the text appears in that box is how our judges will see it, so spend a minute to check it's all as it should be.
But, if you're in the Dashboard, and you navigate to the competitions tab on the left from there, clicking a competition will only expand it to give you the full brief. To enter, all you need to do is select the one you want, and scroll down to the bottom to continue.
Then, once you get into the editor page, you're good to start putting together your entry.
Our editor will preserve a lot of formatting - like tab spaces, bold, italics, and that sort of thing - but when copying in from some text editors, it will lose auto-indents. This is because our editor doesn't interpret that chunk of code that your editor might use (especially for Libre Office, Open Office, and some other editors) in the same way. What your editor knows is an indent, our editor can't pick up. So, you may notice that despite your work being indented on your computer, it loses that formatting in ours. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do. Manually tabbed lines will stay indented, so if you've got an auto indent working that's been applied most of the time, but you've manually indented a few lines through editing (it happens), then you may see your formatting go a bit weird when you paste it in.
We've made every effort to combat this, but unfortunately, we're only able to make it so intuitive. Without access to the core code of all those editors, we can only say that we recommend pasting without formatting to remove all auto-indents, and if you want to add them back in, tab them. Otherwise, just space your paragraphs out like they are in this blog, and the indents won't matter. And heck, we won't mark you down for that! We know formatting isn't perfect between editors, so we take into account discrepancies like that. So, if you notice something off post-submission, don't worry, we won't hold it against you.
And lastly, in the editor field, if the submit button doesn't light up, then check you've entered a title, and if that doesn't fix things, click on your body of work, and hit any key. Even a space at the end will do it! Some browsers don't register a right-click as a keystroke, which is what our editor requires to be 'activated'. This is to stop entrants from submitting blank entries by mistake (having not typed anything in the editor, for example), but, sometimes it can feel like it's not working correctly if you've just pasted into the box. So make sure to click it first, hit space, and then paste it, and you'll be good to go.
If you have any further questions, want some inside tips on how to make the most of Grindstone's new fancy dashboard, or want to know m
ore about our writing competitions, then keep an eye on our blog, or our social media, and stay up to date.
Speaking of which - if you think that others would benefit from knowing all this, then use the share buttons below to share this post and spread the news of our awesome new site and blog!
Until next time,
Dan
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