Rule Reminder: Story Titles and Links
Many users come to Mibba to read, write, or post stories. However, to post stories on Mibba they have got to follow a few of the guidelines that Mibba has set in place. These rules are here to help Mibba maintain a professional, neat, and organized look, that all-in-all help Mibbians become better authors. The ones who take care of any story problems or queries are the story editors. These lovely people have volunteered to peruse through the story pages and make sure that the rules are being followed. If they find one that isn't quite up to scratch, they will write up a report, fix the error if they can, and send a message to the user informing them of the problem. Also, if anyone ever has any questions about the story section of Mibba they are more than welcome to send a PM to one of the story editors.
Some of the rules can be a bit confusing. Hopefully, the following will help ease that confusion a little. This will be a guide to some of the rules that are most often broken. For future reference, the rules can always be found in the Knowledge Base under the Stories' tab. The Knowledge Base is at the bottom of the webpage, on the blue bar right between Privacy Policy and Mobile Version. Anything and everything to do with Mibba can be found there (tutorials, F.A.Qs, guidelines, helpful articles, etc.).
Titles
Titles can be one of the best ways to quickly catch a reader's attention. It can be short and mysterious or long and breath-taking, whichever the author chooses -- as long as the user follows the following rules.
Titles cannot contain any decorations.
Decorations can look pretty, but more often than not it can make titles distracting and cluttered looking. Mibba guidelines state that titles cannot contain any decorations, at all.
Examples:
(¯`•.¸¸.•´¯`•.¸¸.->Stuck in the Middle<-.¸¸.•´¯`•.¸¸.•´¯)
Titles must have correct capitalization.
The first and last word in a title is always to be capitalized, whereas words such as a, and, the, or, nor, of, in, as, to or but and any preposition shorter than three letters should remain lower-case. If you are unsure of a word you can ask one of the editors.
Examples:
Tags are also not allowed in the title.
Mibba provides a tag field specifically for tags. Having tags in the title can make the title and the site look very cluttered and disorganized. Tags consist of stating what the story is about, who it's about, whether if it's fanfiction or original, amongst other things. If it isn't the actual title it should not be included in the title.
Examples:
Links
Links can be pretty useful, sometimes. However, they cannot be posted in the content of a story. When talking about what a character is wearing you should describe it, not link to it. Any relevant links can be posted in the author's notes at the end of the chapter. We all want to improve as writers, so skipping out for a link to an image, instead of describing it can really hurt. Use your words; they are powerful, young padawan.
Also, links are allowed in the long summary. However, if the link is to something that belongs in the character's bio then it does not belong in the long summary. If you would like to introduce your characters you can use the characters function. That's what it's there for. Long summaries are meant to introduce the readers to the story they are about to read. Or to warn the users what may happen in the story (slash, femmslash, swearing, death, etc.).
The best place for links is the author's note. However, they too must be relevant to the story. You can credit betas, story editors, readers, etc in the author's notes, but you cannot promote other user's stories, your social media site, or something off the wall like where to buy the cheapest shoes at.
If you have any questions you can leave a comment here and I will get back to you. However, if it's specifically about stories you can PM a story editor and they will be more than happy to help you. If you spot a story breaking any of the rules, please PM a story editor and they will see to it. Don't approach anyone for breaking the rules, let the staff members handle it.
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