Word Processing: There are some similarities to word processing and we have tried to make it as easy as possible. However, articles on the web are NOT the same and do NOT use the same formats as word processing or graphics packages. On top of that, screens are different sizes from paper sheets and different users can use different size screens to view the same article so the shape can change.

By far the BEST way to prepare an article is to type it straight into the web "editor" and format it on the spot. Whereas you can copy and paste from other products, this can sometimes lead to difficulties. Why? Well, every program uses special invisible codes which are embedded in the document; these are not visible normally but (for instance) might "tell" the computer to start making text bold and red and then further in the document there might be codes to stop the bolding and red. Every program uses different codes so there is no compatibility. Some of the invisible codes can really "muck up" your document on the web. On top of that, programs such as Microsoft Word have so much "junk" in them that a web article prepared this way can be up to three times the size of one directly typed or copied/pasted from plain text.

If you need to prepare the same document for multiple purposes, there are some suggested ways to do it at the end of the article. Firstly, I am going to show a few basic things to get you started. Feel free to prepare "test" or "junk" articles because at the moment, when you submit an article, it will be checked (by me) before being published on the web. So, as long as you put something in the title or near the top of the article to say "Don't publish", then you can experiment without causing any problems. As people become more experienced, they will be able to write, edit AND publish articles.