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New eyes to your page will be extremely sensitive to way you display your words. Inappropriate, conflicting, font type, colour, and size will immediately give an impression of a less than professional page.
Unless it's relevant or to emphasise something, don't use 'fancy scripts', remember that different browsers support different fonts and less than desired effect could be shown to your reader if their machine doesn't have same text format as yours.
The same goes for colours of font. Be sparing on use of coloured text and never use contrasts such as yellow on white, as most eyes can barely read several sentences trying to differentiate letters. A good contrast should always exist between letters and background.
I believe prose text looks better when left biased, and
centred text kept for works in poem form, or when needed for effect.
Neither should sentences be justified, as s t r e t c h i n g o u t is at odds with our mental concept of written word.
Great wads of text can look daunting and much use should be made of 'white space', so unless two paragraphs need to be closed together leave a single line between them. Two or three if changing scene, or pace, though avoid using 'double spaced' text as this will require constant scrolling.
Most fiction relies heavily on spoken interaction between characters, but never let two different 'voices' occupy same line.
If viewer is browsing with an older, smaller pixel size screen, they may find it necessary to scroll sideways. To avoid sentences running on past right side of scree I find it preferable to place text within a 'table'. This will limit width, and it also allows 'white space' to left margin, which looks far more balanced.
Something that should always be remembered is that that HTML is a "dynamic language" consequently scripts and colours that look terrific on your own computer, in your particular type of browser, set with your preferences may look like a surrealist dream on someone else's monitor. If you can, download other browsers to your desktop and view older versions of each, since some people are still using these.
John Stevenson is administrator of the www.calein-day.com and www.fictionsearch.com literary websites click here http://www.caelin-day.com/author/directory.html to read the full ebook. john@mail.caelin-day.com