The best fix I can see is to paste it into the TEXT tab, rather than the HTML tab. When you paste into a wysiwyg online editor from Word, it pastes in all of Words code. Not just web coding, but proprietary MS code, which the wysiwyg doesn't always recognize. I'm guessing the paragraph break is one of those things that's changed enough to be unrecognizable.

Doing it that way, if you've formatted words in italics, or underlined, or with links, those won't come through, but you can get around that by using the html code [i][/i] (only in carets) for example, around italicized words, within the text. Of course, it also loses the paragraph breaks, but you can see it immediately, and just use a hard return there (rather than code) to make it break properly.

Does that make sense?

At first I thought it was the difference between Word 2003 and Word 2007 (I didn't realize my Word was saving everything as .docx files until I ran into this problem), but once I saved the file as .doc and tried cutting and pasting it, I found it was still doing the same thing (which it never used to). I'm just going to start remembering to put an extra hard return between paragraphs when it's something I know I'll eventually end up posting in LJ. It's really only my fic that I want to post online that is effected and that's not much.

You know though, when I think about it, I did mess around some with the line spacing when I started one of my more recent documents. In fact, it might have been the one that's been giving me problems. I wonder if that may have had some effect on what the LJ posting box is seeing as line spacing between paragraphs. I may have to experiment some more. I probably caused this myself without even realizing it and now I'm going to have to try and trace my footsteps. Sigh.

Thanks for your help, Deena. New computer, new programs, so much to get used to!

You're welcome.

It lost the paragraph break when I posted some lorem ipsum for me just now, so it may not be you. It may be that saving as a 2003 doc just takes out anything "special" that would keep it from being read in the older version of Word, rather than everything that makes it different.

Yeah, could be that, too.

I'll probably keep playing with it off and on. I don't post long fic in LJ very often, so it's not something that really has an extreme adverse effect on my life. Hee. So, if I eventually figure something out, great, and if I don't it's no big. I prefer to do all my own html coding, so if the only thing I have to remember is the extra return between paragraphs, I think I'll survive.

I never use docx files anymore, because it seems that nobody in my acquaintance can open one.

I've been told that saving as docx is a huge memory saver, so I've been thinking about redoing all my files in it, at least for storage, even if I have to save as a 2003 for sending to someone.

Docx is smaller, but with 1TB drives having double digit prices, Word Processor document size just isn't an issue with me anymore. I'm sticking with .doc since nearly anything can open it.

If it's too late to incorporate, then I'll put looking at Sam to rest. I hope I was able to help in some small measure.

I'm getting close to having revised chapter 17 done, then 18, then the plot will start to accelerate and revision should get a bit easier. Once advantage to being a chapter ahead of both beta exchange people is more time to press ahead on revision. I've fallen behind where I'd like to be. My goal of finishing by the end of the year has been moved back to St. Patrick's Day. I'll be doing well to just get through the first revision by the end of the year and St. Patrick's Day may be optimistic.

I'm a bit torn right now on what to work on. OTOneH, I feel like the characters need more work to have more, you know, character and that makes me want to go back to earlier chapters to work on dialogue, physical beats, inner monologue (thought that's mostly one character), and descriptions. OTOtherH, I want to press forward, trying to do better on those things and going back later. Maybe I should just switch back and forth and multitask. I'm feeling kinda down about the whole thing and the main reason is the characters. OTThirdHand, doing that threatens to escalate word count and even my plan of cutting out a section of plot, word count might get too high.

My advice, for what it's worth, would be to continue work on the story, write it out to the end, revising as you go. You can make notes, or do character sketches, small scenes, backstory, but with no intent of including any of it in the actual book. It's just for you to flesh out the characters to yourself so you can write them clearer to your readers.

I think if you keep going back before you go forward you'll make yourself crazy, lose the natural momentum of the story, and the end won't ever measure up to the beginning.

...not that I'd know anything about that.

Bev, that passage that was driving me nuts? Continued driving me nuts and I tweaked it more (although I've moved on, I swear.) But it's up in my blog if'n you want to take a look and offer a thought.