How the Spoonbill Generator Works

Adding a line - Stanza Breaks - Correcting Mistakes - Ending a Poem - Prose

Adding a Line

• To add a line, click on the button. This will open the submission form. The maximum line length is 100 characters. A blank line will be rejected.
• The Spoonbill Generator is meant to be collaborative, so it won't let you add conscutive lines.
• Please enter a name. You don't need to enter a name, but if you don't, your line will be attributed to "Anon." If you have cookies enabled, you will find the Spoonbill remembers your name from your last submission. Don't use the same name as another contributor to the poem.
• Enter a single word for possible inclusion in the title. If you enter more than one, only the first one will be accepted.
• If you don't submit a title word, the Spoonbill Police will reprimand you for being so lazy. A word will be chosen at random from the line you submitted, and put in brackets to indicate that it comes from the Spoonbill and not from you. In the longer term, you will probably find it impossible to live with the shame of having words chosen for you.
• Enter a comment if you wish. Note that comments are only intended as feedback on the poem in progress, and are not preserved when the poem is finished.
• When you click on the button, your line will be added to the poem and a Thank You page will appear. Click on the button to go back to the poem.
• The FAQ provides the answers to questions such as How do I put words in italics or bold? and How do I indicate stress?.

Stanza Breaks

• On the form you'll see a set of radio buttons like this:

  Line continues stanza
  Line ends stanza
  Line starts new stanza

• By default, the Spoonbill Generator assumes you're going to continue the current stanza - if that's what you want to do, you don't need to worry about these radio buttons.
• If you want your line to be the last line in the current stanza select the Line ends stanza option. This will put a blank line after your line.
• To end the current stanza and make your line the first of the next stanza, select Line starts new stanza. This will put a blank line before your line.

Correcting Mistakes

• The last line in a poem can be corrected or deleted by the person who submitted it.
• To do so, look at the drop down list: Add this line Correct the previous line Delete the previous line and select which option you want.
  These options, for obvious reasons, won't be available in a new poem with no lines.
  Only the last line can be corrected or deleted. Once someone else has contributed another line, you won't be able to go back and change yours. In these circumstances the only way to get a mistake fixed is to send a suitably contrite (or even abject) e-mail message to mistake@spoonbill.org and I'll see what I can do. Minor spelling or punctuation mistakes can always be fixed, if you care enough! But I can't fix a mistake if that means making nonsense of subsequent contributions, and I never delete your line once someone else has followed it.
  Unfortunately, if you have a dialup connection, you will occasionally find you cannot correct or delete a line entered during a previous dialup session. Once I've implemented a registration facility, this problem will disappear.

  Ending a Poem

  • You can end a poem only if the previous contributor has ended a stanza.
  • In that case the drop down list
  Add this line Correct the previous line Delete the previous line End the poem will have an extra option End the poem.
• You cannot contribute a line at the same time - anything you type in the Line of verse field will be ignored.
• If you select the End the poem option, the the completed poem will be automatically added to the Golden Treasury of Collaborative Verse and a new blank poem will replace it.
• If you decide to end a poem, you might want to be the person who starts the next one - this doesn't count as contributing two consecutive lines.
• As a matter of etiquette, it is not normally regarded as acceptable to end a poem to which you have not previously contributed. The Spoonbill doesn't currently enforce this, but it may do in the future. If you insist on doing so, you might be banned from the Spoonbill Generator.

Prose

The prose pages works in basically the same way as the poems, but there are a number of differences. Some of these are because the prose pages have not yet been updated to match the recently redesigned verse pages; others arise from the different requirements of prose:

• You enter your text in a multi-line text box, which allows (currently) up to 240 characters. If you enter more that, you'll get a warning when you click on the Submit button.
• Instead of stanza breaks, you can start or end your submission with a paragraph breaks
• You can also add line breaks or paragraph breaks within your contribution:
  • If you press the Enter/Return key ONCE while typing text in the box, the Spoonbill Generator will add a simple line break. This is suitable for things like lists, where you don't actually want a gap in the middle of your contribution, you just want to move to a new line.

        This will produce a
        line break
    

  • If you press the Enter/Return key TWICE while typing text in the box, the Spoonbill Generator will add a paragraph break, i.e. it will add a blank line and indent the first line of the following text.
    

        This will produce a
    
        paragraph break
    

• There is separate Platinum Treasury for prose pieces.