WordPress.com Forums » Topic: Why does post format change when posted?

absurdoldbird on "Why does post format change when posted?"

absurdoldbird — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:45:21 +0000

If you use Windows, the simplest thing is to copy and paste from notepad, which you should find on your computer. (There is a similar program on a Mac, but I'm not a Mac user and can't remember what it's called). It retains the line breaks but leaves out all the incompatible coding that Word dumps in.

Also - here's a quick thing to remember:

to break a line for a paragraph, hit your return or enter key once.
to break a line for single spacing (ie, at the end of a line for a new one) hold down the shift key while hitting the return or enter key.

Even those couple of tips should help you with most poetry.

timethief on "Why does post format change when posted?"

timethief — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:05:26 +0000

It's not as difficult as it seems. :)

carolwelsh on "Why does post format change when posted?"

carolwelsh — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:04:49 +0000

I'll try all of that...but I'm worried all of this may be a bit beyond me. Thanks!

timethief on "Why does post format change when posted?"

timethief — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:55:12 +0000

@carolwelsh
As you have been copying and pasting text from elsewhere without using either icon 5 or icon 6 in Row 2 of the visual editor, please see here http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#pasting-text

Then go to Settings > Writing and select “ ___ WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” and then scroll down and click “Save Changes.”

Posts > All Posts, change all your latest posts to Draft, click Update, change them back to Published, click Update again. (You can edit all of them at once: tick the square in front of their titles then select Edit from the Bulk Actions dropdown and click Apply.)

carolwelsh on "Why does post format change when posted?"

carolwelsh — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:51:38 +0000

Oh my gosh, yes, that helps...but maybe I just won't post poems anymore, yikes! Anyway, thanks!

absurdoldbird on "Why does post format change when posted?"

absurdoldbird — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:35:59 +0000

Two things you need to know. First, if you're posting from a word processor, like Word:

http://en.support.wordpress.com/microsoft-word/

Second you need to know how to format poetry so that it will show up the way you want, in your posts:

http://en.support.wordpress.com/writing-and-formatting-poetry/

I hope that helps.

carolwelsh on "Why does post format change when posted?"

carolwelsh — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:41:09 +0000

I'm not sure why this keeps happening, but when I post a poem, the format changes once I hit publicize. Does anyone know what I might be doing wrong? I copy and paste...could that be the reason? Do I need to retype the whole poem into the post box to keep the format from changing? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!