Perhaps you like to write your blog articles in Word or received articles from other that are in Word. You have been simply copy and pasting from Word into WordPress, and wondering why the font and style of text doesn’t match some of your other blog articles.

The reason: Copying and pasting from Word is actually pasting hidden HTML formatting code that’s interfering with your blog’s built-in formatting features (called style sheets). You can verify this by simply peeking at the HTML code by clicking on the “Code” view. I know looking at HTML is scary but you’ll see lots of additional tags (like p class=â€�MsoNormalâ€�) in front of and at the end of what you’ve pasted.

There are several solutions to this issue according to an article about pasting from Word in the WordPress forum:

1. Always copy and paste content from a plain text editor
2. Use the Advanced Menu feature for pasting
3. Use the code view to manually remove the unwanted HTML tags

I’ll go over each of these options:

1. Always copy and paste content from a plain text editor. A plain text editor strips away everything else but text, hence the name “plain”. Most operating systems come with these editors already installed. On a Mac, it’s called “TextEdit”, and on a PC, its called “WordPad” or “NotePad”. If you want to compose your posts off-line, use one of these plain text editors. If someone has sent you a Word document, simply copy and paste the Word content into a plain text editor, and then copy and paste into WordPress.

2. Use the “Advanced Menu” feature in WordPress. Inside the WordPress writing a post or page area, at the end of the first line of icons, there’s an icon that when clicked, displays a second row of formatting icons:

See the little icons with the “T” and the “W”, these will bring up windows that let you paste your Word content. I suggest you try out both to see which you prefer. The “T” (for “Text”) will remove all formatting, while the “W” (for “Word”) will leave some in.

If the icon for the Advanced Menu isn’t visible in WordPress, you’ve got a few options. First, try different variations of “control v” and “alt v” and “alt shift v” to see if you can get it to come up. I’ve had clients tell me that depending on their browser and their operating system, this pattern may vary. If you aren’t running the latest version of WordPress, you might consider upgrading because it’s possible that your version doesn’t support this feature.

3. Use the code view to manually remove the unwanted HTML tags. This last method is not for those of you who don’t know HTML. If you do know HTML and you want to clean up the unwanted tags manually, simply click on the Code view and delete all the unwanted tags yourself. Again, unless you know HTML, don’t use this method.

It’s important that the formatting of your blog articles is consistent to ensure that your blog looks as professional as possible - and if you write your blog articles off-line, be sure to use one of the techniques mentioned above to paste nice clean plain text into WordPress.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 9:53 am and is filed under the Blogs, WordPress category. Read other Aldebaran Website Design Blog articles by returning to main blog page. Need a blog added to your website? Click here to read about blog installation services or click here to contact Aldebaran Web Design.