I often write something using Microsoft Word. Sometimes the character count may be 3,000.
And when I paste it into italki's Discussion Details section, it is over the 5,000 character limit.
Then I have to waste a lot of time re-formatting the text to get it under the 5,000 character limit.
So, I did a little experiment.
Test 1
1 Started a new discussion (starting with 5,000 characters)
2 Hit ENTER and 5,000 became 4978 = 22 characters
3 Hit ENTER and 4978 became 4967 = 11 characters
4 Hit ENTER and 4967 became 4956 = 11 characters
5 Hit ENTER and 4956 became 4945 = 11 characters
Test 2
1 Started a new discussion (starting with 5,000 characters)
2 Hit SHIFT + ENTER and 5,000 became 4992 = 8 characters
3 Hit SHIFT + ENTER and 4992 became 4988 = 4 characters
4 Hit SHIFT + ENTER and 4988 became 4984 = 4 characters
5 Hit SHIFT + ENTER and 4984 became 4980 = 4 characters
Conclusion
Using SHIFT + ENTER will save 7 characters (11-4) as opposed to using ENTER only.
Not a big difference, but a little helpful when trying to stay under the low 5,000 character limit.
Has anyone else found ways to reduce the number of characters in the Discussion section?
@Mikkel,
Yeah, those sheets get pretty wild if you don't watch over them.
Tool's fault - that's what I deduced based on how the code looks but it's still mostly a guess.
Excellent tip! Thank you, Richard :)
What I found very helpful when it comes to the Arabic script is that if I want to copy a text
from the internet, it's better to paste it first in the google translation box, then copy it again
from that box and paste it here. This removes any kind of format it has, so instead of pasting
just couple of lines in Arabic, you could actually paste several lines in the discussion section.
@Grzybek
CSS?, are you trying to blow my brains out with such a strange word! (I looked it up - cascading style sheets - sounds very dangerous - I only use normal sheets that don't cascade).
Oh, bollocks, but thanks mate. I currently use OpenOffice Writer. I have recently bought a pc, but used to use a mac, for which I have purchased a word processor. I downloaded OpenOffice for the pc because it was free, but it seems it's not such a great idea then.
@ Grzybek
I looked at the fonts in MS Word, and you are right, there is no Roboto font (but I did notice a font called Poor Richard :)
Richard, yes, I practice Shift+Enter too:)
"Enter" is <p><br></p>, Shift+Enter is <br>
<br> is HTML tag for a new line.
<p></p> is HTML opening and closing tags for a paragraph.
If you use two or more spaces in a row, all but one are 6 characters ( ).
'Tab' is .