I use Scrivener to hold my fanfiction, and I would like to post to Ao3 directly from scrivener. The website has support for plain text with limited html, so I thought that using the simply ‘copy as html’ option would work for my needs, or even the ‘copy as basic html’ since I don’t need to worry about retaining heading formats or anything, just indents, paragraph breaks, italics, bold, and occasional extra line breaks.
But Neither ‘copy as html’ nor ‘copy as basic html’ retain italics or bold when I paste it into the editor on the website. When I read through the html, the italic tags aren’t even there anymore?
I understand that these things would be retained if I exported the file as an .rtf but Ao3 as a webpage doesn’t allow me to then Import an .rtf file. You have to put the text directly into the editor on the website. So if I exported as an .rtf I’d then have to re-open it somewhere and RE-copy it to try to paste which is a lot of steps for what should be a very simple copy/paste.
Why doesn’t the ‘copy as html’ actually copy all the html involved, and is there another option I can use to get the result I want without importing and exporting things?
I wonder if maybe the site doesn’t like how it is setting italics. At least it should be throwing a span around the italic text, with some CSS to make it italic. We should maybe make that a bit better and use <em> or even <i> as that is more broadly compatible. Are you not seeing the spans though? Maybe there is an issue with how it is set as italic in the editor. Is there anything unusual you’re doing, like using styles instead? That should work equally well, but I’m trying to think of why they simply wouldn’t be recognised at all.
Well, one thing I often recommend to people who need cleaner HTML for pasting into websites is to compile to MultiMarkdown (HTML), at the very bottom of the Compile For menu. The trick is to go into the Options tab on the right, and set the Convert rich text to MultiMarkdown checkbox. Otherwise it would only work if you actually wrote using Markdown (asterisks instead of italics). If you just want one piece of the outline, back in the Contents tab, set the compile group at the top to “Current Selection”, which will use whatever you select in the binder before going into compile.
That’s going to be much cleaner than anything you’ll get out of rich text to HTML conversion in Scrivener.
Hrm, okay I do see the spans, but I admit I was looking for em or i as that’s what I’m more familiar with. For some reason the website isn’t registering the span style=italics as actually Being an italicization?
I’m a little confused about the compiling option, as wouldn’t that mean creating a new file on my computer for the text, which would then need to be imported to the webpage?
I’ve been searching thoroughly through reddit and fanfiction writing sites to see what other fanfic writers do about the problem, but they all seem to go through a third party to post anything, exporting the file into a totally different writing program just so they can copy and paste it, which while I understand it technically Works, it does kind of defeat the purpose of having scrivener if I have to go through a different writing program anyway? I think the only one that didn’t require also owning word or going through google docs (the program i’m trying to move Away from) was suggesting exporting to an html file and then opening the file in Notepad, then copy/pasting into the editor. Which DID retain the italics and is working as a quick fix for the moment.
I’m just confused why exporting as html keeps italics but Copying as html doesn’t?
If you’re using a non-chromium browser like Firefox, you could try enabling HTML on Scrivener’s clipboard and then using a regular copy and paste into the rich-text editor on Ao3. Open File > Options, select Sharing, then Export and tick the option to Write HTML clipboard data. Set the Styling dropdown above it to “Inline CSS”.
!!! That did it! I still have weird spaces between my non italic punctuation and my italic words but that’s apparently an ao3 thing, so its neither here nor there.
This option allowed me to copy and paste my text directly into the rich text editor and it retained all the italics and bolding! Thank you so much for your patience and help! This completely eliminates my need to use a third-party system to move my fic to ao3, which is a gamechanger! 
I love Firefox. XD
I will now share this trick with every fic writer i come across who uses scrivener and firefox.