Does the RC uses html's?

My RC right now is show as this:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV

I want it to show like this:

ABCDEFGH

IJKLMNOP

QRSTUVWXYZ

(only using alphabet as example)

To me, the first example is really really clutter up and doubt that someone would want to read it. I don't have that much RC's but it seems alot if it's clutter so I want to make it less clutter so people would actually read it.

Yengkong,

You can add bullets, bold, italics, etc. to your RC. Not sure why it's showing up all together.

Or are you talking about your bookshelf header? There's no formatting for that one.

Maybe it'll be easier to understand if I just post my real RC. I updated it a little. (Color is only there to separate things.) [Ignore the RC's I have below. I was editing as I was asking questions on how to do the bullet points to not make my RC so clutter. My RC right now is not this long.]

Right now it's showing as this:

No torn pages, no highlights, no notes inside book. Cover look decent and won't fall off after picking up book for the first couple times. Minor writings such as your name or encouraging words on the front and or back cover is acceptable and I will gladly take those as long as it's only 1 or 2. I will not accept books that have a messy front or back cover with writings from numerous people signing it or your note takings of sorts. If the book is a hardcover book, I will only accept books with the dusk jacket. Sometimes there may be several edition of a book. I would like the book to have the same cover as the one on the picture in PBS if at all possible. If not the same cover, as long as the ISBN's are the same is fine as well.

I want it to show as this:

No torn pages, no highlights, no notes inside book. Cover look decent and won't fall off after picking up book for the first couple times.

Minor writings such as your name or encouraging words on the front and or back cover is acceptable and I will gladly take those as long as it's only 1 or 2. I will not accept books that have a messy front or back cover with writings from numerous people signing it or your note takings of sorts.

If the book is a hardcover book, I want the books with the dusk jacket.

No books in a smoking home please. (If you smoke outside and book doesn't smell like smoke, I'll gladly take it.)

Sometimes there may be several edition of a book. I would like the book to have the same cover as the one on the picture in PBS if at all possible. If not the same cover, as long as the ISBN's are the same is fine as well.

I would appreciate it if books are sent to me with 1 layer of extra protection on the inside before the outer wrapping during the months of January, February, March, August, October, November, and December due to rain season and snow season.

I want it to have those spaces so it'll be easier to read as shown on the second one rather then all clutter like the first one. I have it set up like the secone one (blue) in my settings but it's showing like the first one (red.)

I have to say, you might want to seriously edit down your RC.  RCs that look long are more likely to be turned down.  Yours will be long, even with the added spaces.  Tone also matters in a RC.  If folks feel you are sounding strict or angry, they will turn it down.

Folks in this forum will help edit your RC to be short and friendly.

An old thread talking about RC wording.

The line "I would appreciate..."is vague.  Is it required or not?  Make it yes or no, not fuzzy.   It is often better to be very clear than be very polite.

Are you using Firefox to write your RCs?  Other browsers are a bit off, sometimes.

Have you tried using the  bullets in the formatting bar?

Sometimes if you can't get an "enter" to work, you can use a "shift-enter."

I'm looking at this condition:

Sometimes there may be several edition of a book. I would like the book to have the same cover as the one on the picture in PBS if at all possible. If not the same cover, as long as the ISBN's are the same is fine as well.

The person looking at your RC likely has only one copy of the book that he has posted.  It will either match the cover art or not.  (And of course the cover images showing on this site don't have to match the image on that particular edition of the book, as long as the title and author are the same, so the cover showing may not be correct for that ISBN anyway.)  To me, it doesn't seem like there's much point to asking him to match the cover art if he can.  He won't be going through several editions of the book and choosing the right one for you.

I would suggest that you leave this condition off, and if you order a book where you definitely want the cover to match, you rewrite your condition as a requirement (not an option), save the changes, order the book, then go back and take that requirement out (so it's not there for your next order) and save the changes again.

If you ever get a book where the ISBN doesn't match, you would mark it "received with a problem" --> "wrong book" and could ask for your credit back.

I'd decline your RC without reading it in both forms. There are just too many conditions and some of them are very subjective. What is a 'decent' cover? How can I guarantee that the cover will stay on if you pick it up more than a few times? For all I know, you are very rough handling your books and even brand new books disintegrate in your hands. The sender shouldn't be held accountable for what happens after you read the book.

Your RC should look exactly as you have typed it. Are you saying that you've typed it and it shows up in your RC window as the formatted blue, but shows up on your requests unformatted like the red? Or is it showing up in your RC window as the unformatted red block? If you go into Settings and edit it to be formatted the way you want it and then click Update Request Settings is it somehow reverting back to the unformated red block? However you type it in Settings is how it should be shown, if it is not you may need to contact the Team.

Melanie: It's showing like the blue in settings, but it's showing as the red after it's been accepted not on settings.

D. G. : I was kinda updating and changing things while I was asking this question so I just copied and paste what I wrote before I re-edited it on here. Already worded it down to make it make more sense but still can't get it to not be in one big bulk paragraph.

Oh yeah, I'd edit that RC down. If that popped up on my screen, I'd decline without reading it all the way through. I'd narrow it down to bullets:

- No books from a smoking household

- Hardcovers must have dust jackets

Stuff like that. That looks much more manageable, not a big intimidating block of text staring you in the face.

Erin, I've been trying to do that. Cause I really only have 3 RC's but it's not letting me do it in bullet. It's always going in big bulk paragraph like it is in the red paragraph. I'm using Firefox to do it.

Melanie: It's showing like the blue in settings, but it's showing as the red after it's been accepted not on settings

I see what you are seeing now I think - the little pop up you can access when you click the button on your active transactions? I don't think that's how it shows to the requester, I think its just in that window since I can go to my Transaction Archive and look at older transactions and they have the correct formatting.

That button on the active transactions is very new and they may not have a way to spread it out, they may not know it loses formating, or they may have a simple reason why they don't maintain the formatting there. You could send in Feedback via the Contact Us link in the lower right and ask the Team about it, but I do believe that the poster will see your formatted RCs.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

I would decline it in both forms as well.  It screams picky requestor to me even if you don't mean it to sound that way.

Sorry, but I don't know how to do the bullet points. And what I meant was that even your bullets were too long and wordy. They should be short and sweet; say exactly what you mean with no extra words to flourish or complicate the matter.

I'm with Mary; I'd decline this RC in either form as being too complicated, too vague, and too picky.

Hi Yengkong,

Welcome to PBS!

I see that you are a new member, so you may not be aware that some of the things that you have put into your RC are already covered by the PBS rules.

(torn pages are not allowed at all, and writing and highlighting are only allowed when the sender notifies the requestor before mailing and receives an OK to mail it anyway. Covers must be firmly attached to the book. Senders are required to mail the book with the same ISBN that was requested.) Books with any of these things wrong with them are already not allowed at PBS for trading, and if you receive books like this, you can mark them "Received with a Problem" and ask the sender for your credit back.

Most people would probably advise you to omit these requirements from your RC, as they are not allowed anyway, and some people do decline to send books if they feel that the RC is telling them something that they already know.

(Edited to clarify about writing/highlighting ... the PBS rules say that writing and highlighting are not allowed on text pages unless the notification rule is used .... but writing on the cover, inside the cover, and on non-text pages is allowed without notification. Your RCs seem to be saying that this type of writing might be OK with you, and it is within what PBS allows ... so this part of your RC may be unnecessary, too. Unless you think that the type of writing which is allowed will bother you, in which case, you may need to keep that part in your RC. Although I would re-word it so that it is more clear what you will and will not accept.)

As far as conditions like "Sometimes there may be several edition of a book. I would like the book to have the same cover as the one on the picture in PBS if at all possible. If not the same cover, as long as the ISBN's are the same is fine as well." what you are really saying (the way this is currently worded) is that if the ISBNs match, the book is acceptable to you. This is already required by PBS, so not necessary in your RC.

As far as your RC goes, I might consider editing it down to:

1. If this request is for a hardcover book, please include the dust jacket.
2. No books from a smoking home, please.
3. Please wrap books in a inner layer of plastic for weather protection during the fall and winter months (August thru March).
Thanks very much!

Regardless of what you see in the forums, problems with the books that people send to you are very rare ... people post in the forums about their bad experiences (and never their good ones, so if your experience with PBS consists mostly of reading the forums, at this point, it might seem like there are a lot of problems with books) but PBS averages about 55,000 books mailed every week .... you will notice that in that same time period less than 10 people might start a post complaining about a book they received. And zero people start a post about the other 54,990 very good to average experiences.

Just as an example, I do not have a RC about smoking. I have requested about 750 books and I would say that less than 10 arrived with a smoke smell, and of those, only 2 or 3 were overwhelmingly smoky. So, even without a RC, the instances of very smoky books arriving at my house is very small.

I could say the same with most of the other conditions that you have listed.

I would not read beyond the first line, to be honest. That is a lot of RC, which you are absolutely entitled to, but it's too much for me. My books are in excellent condition but I'd still be concerned they'd be a RWAP on the receiving end.

Edited to add: read your profile. Your decision to go to the post office when you have a minimum of 5 requests may not work. If you don't have 5 requests and you go beyond the parameters set down by TPTB that may be a violation.

I can only go to the post office on Saturdays but whether I have 1 or 6 books to mail I don't think I'd want to wait if I only have 1.

Pioneervalleygirl, I read her profile to mean that she goes to the PO every Friday, but might go sooner if she has five books to mail. That should work for her, if she's careful.

If you want to be sure your RC is read, Keep it short.

I would appreciate it if books are sent to me with 1 layer of extra protection on the inside before the outer wrapping during the months of January, February, March, August, October, November, and December due to rain season and snow season.

If it were me, I would just make this a standard RC to put extra protection in the package for the entire year. What would happen if someone sent you a book during one of the month?s that it?s not raining or snowing and it rained or snowed and the book got damaged? Would you RWAP the book?

Just wanted to pop in and say Melanie is right about the formatting.  I sent in feedback to the Team about this on my account a couple weeks ago.  Here's the response I got if anyone wants to know for reference:

Other members see your requestor conditions with the proper line breaks when they view them before accepting your request. After accepting your request, if they click the "View Requestor Conditions" button, they see them the same way you see them. We aren't able to show requestor conditions that contain special HTML formatting in the overlay window.

So in other words, the member will see them formatted that way when they first accept the request, but if after accepting they view them again for a reminder, they will be all smashed together like that.  And you can't change it, unfortunately. 

And if I redid your RC, I would do something like this:

Hello!  Please make sure when sending your book it meets PBS postability standards and:

• Hardcover books are sent with the dust jacket
• Books from from a non-smoking home (unless you smoke outside and they do not smell)
• The pictured cover matches the book you send (I'm often requesting a specific edition)
• Books are sent with an extra layer of protection underneath the wrapper (like plasitc wrap) to protect from the weather

Thank you very much!

Still a little long, but it looks much more friendly.  I left a few things out, but those are things that are regular PBS standards anyway.  Because you want RCs to be as short as possible, I would focus on the above and beyond things you want. 

The last bullet requiring extra protection you can delete from your RC after March, and add it back in during August.  That way you don't need the explanation of the months, which cuts down space too. 

Good luck!

YengKong,

Try holding down the [CTRL] key when you hit [ENTER] at the end of a paragraph.  I've found this helps put a "hard carriage return" between paragraphs.

Thanks, Elizabeth. I misread the information - reread it and it makes perfect sense now.

pioneervalleygirl: It's already been answered for you but yea, I go to the PO every Friday to mail out books since it's just more convenient for me to go on that day unless I have at least 5 books then I'll go on a different day.

Alisa F: Thanks for the input, I already shorten my RC. I was editing my RC and asking questions on here at the same time so I just posted what I had when I started up as an example.