Text - Carleton CMS Help Centre

Step-by-Step

Basic editing

The text editor bar in WordPress’s content editor is similar to other word processors, with options to:

Bold, italicize and underline text
Increase/decrease indent
Align text (left, centre, right)
Undo/redo

Headings

Headings are used to structure your page or post into sections, which allows it to be easily navigated by readers and increases the page’s accessibility. Headings are also essential to generate a table of contents for your page.

Keep in mind:

Heading 2 is the highest heading level.
Every heading must be nested in a heading of one level higher than it. For example, a Heading 3 must be nested in a Heading 2, but a Heading 4 must not be nested in a Heading 2.

To create a heading:

Highlight the text that you want to convert into a heading.
Click Paragraph on the text editor bar to open the Headings drop-down list.
Select your desired level of heading.

Paste as Plain Text

When you copy and paste from Microsoft World into WordPress, MS Word brings its internal formatting – fonts, sizes, alignment, hyperlinks and much more – with it. These styles tend to override the styles set up in WordPress, which makes your text appear inconsistent on the front end.

The Paste as Plain Text function allows you to paste only text into WordPress:

Click the Paste as text icon to turn it on.
Place your cursor in the content area and paste.
Click the Paste as text icon again to turn it off.

Video Tutorial

Transcript

Module 3: Text

Hello and welcome to Module 3 of the Basic CMS training. This module will walk you through different components of a post; and in this video, we will go over text.

You will notice right away that some functions on the WordPress text editor is very similar to other word processors such as Microsoft Word. It allows you to bold, italicize and underline text. You can also increase and decrease indent; align text left, centre or right; undo and redo changes.

If your page displays a lot of content, you are recommended to use Headings to structure your page. To convert a piece of text into a heading, highlight the text and click “Paragraph”. From the drop-down list, select the level of heading that you want. Heading 2 is the highest level of heading. Make sure that every heading is nested in a heading of one level higher than it. For example, Heading 3 must be nested in Heading 2, but Heading 4 cannot be nested in Heading 2.

Now sometimes when copying and pasting text from external sources, you may encounter formatting problems as the pasted text brings a lot of internal formatting with it. This is where the “Paste as Plain Text” function comes in handy. By pasting as plain text, you paste only the text and not the formatting. To paste as plain text, turn on the “Paste as text” button, go to the text editing area, and paste.

Try It Out!

Now that you have learned basic text editing in CCMS, let’s try it out!

Create a page and add some text to it.
Try bolding, italicizing, underlining; increasing and decreasing indent; and changing text alignment.
Add a heading to your page.
Copy some text from another document and paste it as plain text.

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