Take two italics & call me in the morning

Love me some schadenfreude as much as the next guy, but we actually WANT these people to finally blink and go "oh shit wait, maybe I should move LEFT".

This is a fun option if you use, for example, phrases in other languages in your story. I often do, and this is a nice way to give translations without having to scroll to the end of the text, or putting them in the starting notes where people have to keep checking back – or where they spoiler the story!

HOWEVER. The drawback is that the floating boxes only work when a ‘mouse’ is ‘hovered’ over the marked text. They do NOT show up on tablet or phone screens, so you’ll still need to put a list of translations in the notes for readers using those devices.

Let’s have an example. 

“Qu’est ce que tu veux?”

Now if you speak French, you might know that means “What do you want?”

But not all of your readers will know that. So, you offer them a translation. And since the boxes don’t appear unless you hover directly above them, I usually add a Beginning Note to the chapter that reads something like this;

‘Hover over italicised foreign language text for translations! (Mobile and tablet users please see the Ending Notes)’

In HTML mode in Ao3, (if you try this in Rich Text mode you will get a horrible mess so don’t) the line with this example would appear as:

<p>“<em>Qu’est ce que tu veux?</em>”</p>

To add the floating box with the translation, you would select the words to be translated (that is, Qu’est ce que tu veux?) and paste in the following HTML.

<span title=“What do you want?”>Qu’est ce que tu veux?</span>

The whole line will now read:

<p>“<em> <span title=“What do you want?”>Qu’est ce que tu veux?</span> </em>”</p>

Review your work, hover over the part that requires translating, and you should see the following:

And you’re done!

Namely: "Ejaculated."

There are these two mean girls (TM) - Lavinia and Jesse? I think? Anyway, at one point the text is all, "Goodness me," Lavinia ejaculated, "how we can calculate!"

sm0l(but having gone through US 5th grade)! Subtilior:

I'm trying to make backups of the few things I'm not too embarrassed to keep from Way Back When (because I'm also like 4+ computers beyond what I originally wrote that shit on and some of it got lost in data migrations)

And guys

The password recovery is NON FUNCTIONAL.

That site is circling the drain, so if you've got stuff on there you want to keep, go save it now.

(a) a ritual

(b) a resurrection

(c) a haunting

(d) an apotheosis

(e) fate

(f) a labyrinth

(link provided)(but I’m sure she won’t mind if you donate to whomever you feel like helping, if you are in a position to do so)

(source)

(transcript in read more)

if you are wearing gloves within mittens, and your fingers are freezing, *pull your fingers out of the individual glove fabric fingers, and roll them into a fist.* Like, your bare fingertips should be squished into your bare palms. Roll your thumb over the 2nd phalange of said fingers. (Nb also good for throwing a punch.)

This really conserves heat! Of course, it doesn't work if you need dexterity for something, but if you're waiting outside for a long time, for whatever reason, it is handy to have in your bag of winter tricks.