WordPress.com Forums » Tag: formatting poetry - Recent Posts

timethief on "Centering copy on page"

timethief — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:57:31 +0000

You're welcome and best wishes with your blog. :)

onemoreroll on "Centering copy on page"

onemoreroll — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:31:56 +0000

OK thank you timethief, that's very helpful. Watch this space! (Ha Ha)

timethief on "Centering copy on page"

timethief — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:57:08 +0000

This post and resource links in it are helpful WordPress Formatting and Spacing Read also > Writing and Formatting Poetry

onemoreroll on "Centering copy on page"

onemoreroll — Thu, 17 May 2012 10:49:15 +0000

Sometimes I quote poetry or verse on my blog (elegant grunge template). I like to center the words on the page, but whether this stays in the middle seems very hit and miss. The words realign themselves all over the place. Is there a simple fix for this?

absurdoldbird on "The Format Of War"

absurdoldbird — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:22:52 +0000

You're welcome and I'm glad it worked. :)

lalala100 on "Vertigo Indenting"

lalala100 — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:04:25 +0000

Thank you so much that helped tremendously! I will definitely check into HTML things as well!

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 02:58:33 +0000

absurdoldbird, your suggestion actually worked! I went to Writing<Settings, and sure enough the "WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically" was unchecked! I checked it, hit save, published a test post, and BINGO! it worked. Problem solved. Thank you so much. Thanks to everybody who helped. Peace and Love to you all!

justpi on "Vertigo Indenting"

justpi — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 08:02:16 +0000

You're welcome.

I guess you're getting the span tags because you're using the color tool of the visual editor. Those tools are very limited, and the color tool is designed for changing isolated words or phrases only.

If you're interested, you can try studying my introduction to HTML:
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/introduction-to-html-for-wordpress-com-users/
Then you can check my posts on formatting text.

lalala100 on "Vertigo Indenting"

lalala100 — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 02:14:20 +0000

Rockin, thank you so much! What am I doing to get the 'span' and what does it mean? I don't know what it does. I'm super new and trying to learn :)

justpi on "Vertigo Indenting"

justpi — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:03:41 +0000

To justify all the text and to turn all the text to white you don't add code to each paragraph and you don't add a hundred span tags, you just add this at the beginning of the post (in the HTML editor):

and this at the end of the post:

To get rid of the indentation of a paragraph, you add this at the beginning of the paragraph:

and this at the end of the paragraph:

If you buy the Custom Design upgrade you can get rid of the indentation once for all.

lalala100 on "Vertigo Indenting"

lalala100 — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:35:23 +0000

http://scribblesinaspiralboundnotebook.wordpress.com/

timethief on "Vertigo Indenting"

timethief — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:34:09 +0000

The wordpress.com blog linked to your username is devoid of any blogger created content. Please post an active link starting with http:// to the blog in question.

lalala100 on "Vertigo Indenting"

lalala100 — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:19:44 +0000

Hi! I am having the same indenting problem as two other people who left a comment. I want to have all of the lines in my paragraphs justified, but nothing will change the first line being indented. I've tried justifying it, looking at the html, spacing the other lines over so that theoretically everything should be indented at the same spot, but nothing works. I write mainly poetry, and it looks weird being indented haha.

I was reading that this is the line of code I should put in?

PARAGRAPH TEXT HERE

But where do I put it in? This is a post's html. What would the code look like inserted into it?

<img class="zemanta-img-inserted zemanta-img-configured" title="Tongues" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/120/306586238_b073a01d11_m.jpg" alt="Tongues" width="189" height="240" />
And maybe if I try hard enough 
 If I bite my tongue long enough
If I accept and agree with everything you say and
never have the last word
Ever

Maybe then we will get along, just like you say.
 Maybe I won't rage quite so hard when you assume everything is my fault 
 Maybe I won't feel so alone 
 And like no one has my back
 And that I have to fend for myself because no one else wants to 
 And that I have to stand up for myself because no one else cares enough about me to do it for me.
If when you prewarn me of the consequences of things that haven't even happened yet
 And blame me for things that you weren't even there to witness
And assume everything is my fault,
And quite clearly lay out just terrible you think I am,
If when this happens and I just sit quietly,
Then maybe we will get along, just like you promised.
If I just sit and bite my tongue long enough until you are done your little speech,
Each and every time you feel you have something self-righteous enough to be worth screaming at me for,
If I just bite my tongue long enough, we will get along.

Who am I kidding. 
 If I bite my tongue that long it will fall off.
 It will fall off.

You may as well just cut it off yourself right now.
 Here it is. I'll even give you a pair of scissors.
 That's ultimately what you want, right?
 Just cut it off. 
 And take it with you for good measure. 
 I won't need it after that.
 I'll place it gently in your palm,
 And you can do whatever the **** you want with it. 
 Enjoy.

Thank you!

sonofbruce on "The Format Of War"

sonofbruce — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:42:17 +0000

I should add that in my experience if one is going to publish poetry on the web, learning HTML is pretty much unavoidable, just as in the old days you couldn't expect to master printing without learning how to set type. And for truly responsive design, i.e. long lines that wrap with a hanging indent, advanced CSS is unfortunately required. I keep hoping that someone will write a WordPress plugin for poetry formatting which WordPress.com could then incorporate into the visual editor. That would rock.

sonofbruce on "The Format Of War"

sonofbruce — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:37:30 +0000

If the lines aren't too long, one crude-but-effective approach is to use a text editor to replace all spaces with the HTML for a non-breaking space, then paste that into the code editor.

timethief on "The Format Of War"

timethief — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:32:43 +0000

This is something you might consider. I have a blogging friend on another blogging platform who is a poet. She chooses to create images (watermarked, of course) of all her poems, rather than tyoping in the text an wrestling with formattting an spacing issues. She also starts each post with a text introduction before she uploads the images ie. poems into the posts so the posts do appear in Google's SERPs, and she optimizes the poem images for Google search as well.

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:23:31 +0000

Thank you. I'll definitely try out your suggestion.

absurdoldbird on "The Format Of War"

absurdoldbird — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:17:49 +0000

long dash, hold down the ALT key and, on the numerical keyboard (of your keyboard) type 0151 (It's not a trick, it's the way to do it).

If you want to do a copyright symbol, ALT plus 0169

As for your other problems, prior to your recent comment...

The problem you're having with the shift enter key combination not working, shouldn't be happening. Here's a thought (which may or may not work, but I recall when trying to type out blank verse a year or two ago, having this bother too) - go to your dashboard, scroll down to Settings. Click on 'Writing' and where you see "WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically" check the box then scroll down and click the 'Save changes' button. If it is already checked, try unchecking it.

Sometimes WordPress (and other bloghosts, it's not peculiar to WordPress) changes a bit of code and it gets glitchy.

If you have no success with that, you could try contacting support as, if the suggestions given aren't working it seems to me that something else is wrong.

And if that doesn't work, well then yes, you WILL have to adopt some 'tricks' to get round it. (Either that or try a different bloghost but I can assure you you're likely to get the same problems with them all. Coding obviously hasn't been written with formatting poetry in mind, unfortunately).

And while you obviously prefer not to use Windows Live Writer or another desktop program to write your poetry, if it's a choice of that or not publishing your magazine - which is the best option?

By the way - always, always publish your posts as either drafts or private posts in WordPress before you go live. That way nobody will see any of your mistakes and you might not feel quite so frustrated on the learning curve that is finding out how to blog here!

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:57:14 +0000

Just published another test using Windows Live Writer. The blank spaces are good, and so are the varied spacing within lines. But darnit, Windows doesn't appear to have a feature for inserting special characters such as dashes. And on top of all that, I just noticed another problem. My first test post (using WordPress) is highlighted in blue. Why is that? The test post using windows live isn't hightlighted like that. This makes no sense.

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:45:50 +0000

timethief, I just published a test post on http://www.burstingplethoraofrainbowcolors.wordpress.com following the instructions. See for yourself the failed results of this test.

timethief on "The Format Of War"

timethief — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:41:23 +0000

Does this help? WordPress Formatting and Spacing

shoreacres on "The Format Of War"

shoreacres — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:38:57 +0000

I didn't know about the shift+return trick (shift+enter) for the visual editor. I just tried it and it worked perfectly.

Another possibility is to use the html editor for the poem, then switch back to the visual and add any other formatting you like. With my theme, if I type a poem into the html editor there are line breaks and spaces where I want them.

If nothing else works, you always can type the poem in the visual editor, then edit out extra spaces in the html editor.

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:57:12 +0000

I don't understand why I have to use trickery. The directions in http://en.support.wordpress.com/writing-and-formatting-poetry/ specifically say: "to create a Line Break rather then a Paragraph Break. Instead of hitting the Return key, use Shift+Return . This will explicitly tell the Visual Editor that you don’t want to start a new paragraph, but instead want to force a line break.

The next line after the line break will start immediately below the previous one, with no extra white space, so you can easily create clearly defined blocks of verse inside your poem. When you do want to add some more space – to start the next block – just hit Return like you usually would."
You can add as many line breaks as you want; the Visual Editor will never ignore them. Each time you hit Shift+Return, you’ll get an extra empty line, so you can also use this technique to add really big sections of white space to your poems."

This is a magazine I'm getting ready to start. There are dozens of submissions. It would be way too time consuming to have to do it your way. I appreciate your suggestion, and the other suggestion. But it's not feasible for me.

dlager on "The Format Of War"

dlager — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:30:30 +0000

http://en.support.wordpress.com/writing-and-formatting-poetry/
and that page does advise the "PRE" tag, as suggested by thesacredpath in this thread.

here is a little trickery, I use to use (I still do sometimes)
to help preserve space:

1. press the HTML tab in the post editor

2.type:

..................
..................

..................

3. press the visual tab in the editor, so your back in editor mode.
(you will only see the three lines of dots,when back in visual mode.)

4. Now you can put your poem between the first set of dotted lines.

5. you can put any other commentary or text, etc. after the third set of doted lines

6. when you are done: carefully remove the doted lines.

after doing this a couple times you will get the hang of this.

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:21:39 +0000

Thanks for the advice, but I have no idea regarding the html side of things. I just don't understand why you can't get a blank line IF you follow the directions WordPress gives you.

thesacredpath on "The Format Of War"

thesacredpath — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:21:56 +0000

When using the "pre" tags, my suggestion is that you put in blank lines from within the HTML tab. Just put the cursor at the end of the line you want the blank line after and press return. The "pre" tags sort of bypass the visual editor on some stuff.

poetdaniel on "The Format Of War"

poetdaniel — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:05:46 +0000

People I need help. I can not for the life of me figure out how to get line breaks and blank spaces in my poetry. I followed the directions on Writing And Formatting Poetry, but it's not working. To prove this, I published a post "WordPress And This Poet: War (Revisited)" on my blog that I wrote in the visual editor following the rules. After every two lines of text, there should be a blank space. See for yourself. It's all one big block of text!

raincoaster on "Link for more than one line of text"

raincoaster — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:32:42 +0000

PLEASE don't paste text from WORD. It has so much invisible junk HTML code appended to it that it's actually one of the most common reasons for blogs getting disrupted.

If you like the way Word works, please either use the Paste From Word button in the second row of icons in the Write Post box OR use Windows Live Writer, which works like Word, is free, and allows you to add categories, tags, images, links, and titles to your posts as you're writing them.

erainbowd on "Link for more than one line of text"

erainbowd — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:17:47 +0000

Great - I'll try that.
Is there any way to do it with text pasted in from Word?

raincoaster on "Link for more than one line of text"

raincoaster — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:38:47 +0000

Easy; when you type it in, instead of hitting Enter at the end of the line, hold the SHIFT key down and then hit Enter.