WordPress Tips – Alt-V

This is why I read the WordPress.com forums: pressing Alt-B Alt-V in the Rich Text Editor brings up a second menu with advanced options.

UPDATE 2006/09/22: The keystroke has changed to Alt-V. Alt-E can be used to switch between Compose and HTML mode.

UPDATE 2006/09/23: Mr. Matt of WordPress points out that you can insert page breaks instead of paragraphs in the Rich Text Editor using Shift-Enter.

UPDATE 2007/01/10: If you’re having trouble getting it to work, make sure you click in the text entry box first. Also try Alt-Shift-V instead of Alt-V� (if Alt-V is bringing up the View menu in your web browser).

The biggest surprise was that you can cut-and-paste from Microsoft Word to WordPress and have it generate good HTML!

It has options for

• selecting text and applying formatting
  • paragraph
  • address
  • preformatted
  • heading 1-6
• underline (also Ctrl-U)
• align full (full justification, IE: text is fully justified on the left and right columns with extra spaces between words)
• text colour
• paste as plain text (instead of doing an OLE paste that will retain formatting)
• paste from Word (haven’t tried it, but I assume it correct some of the HTML cruft from Word)
• remove formatting eraser (leave text content, but remove and of the HTML around it, useful for correcting a messed up section)
• clean-up messy code (HTML auto-correction)
• insert custom characters (accents, special characters like copyright and trademark)
• undo (Ctrl-Z) and redo (Ctrl-Y)

After the break, formatting examples.

Formatting Examples

This is preformatted text.

It will look like however it is typed.

This is an address.

123 Road Street

City, State

YOYOYOOY

Standard Headers H6

underline

Full text justification will expand the text so it fills the entire line. This will make it look more like a newspaper column. Personally, I don’t like the way fully-justified text looks on the computer.

Add colours to text to make it pretty (ugly).

Paste Examples

This is what the original MS Word text converts to when cutting and pasting from Word to WordPress.

<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-left: 36pt”><b>This</b> <i>is</i> an <u>example </u>of horrible Microsoft Word OLE <span style=”font-family: “Arial Black””>cut-and-paste</span> to <span style=”font-size: 22pt”>HTML</span>.</p>

paste as plaintext (pops up a window)

<p>This is an example of horrible Microsoft Word OLE cut-and-paste to HTML.</p>

paste from Word (pops up a window)

<p><b>This</b> <i>is</i> an <u>example </u>of horrible Microsoft Word OLE cut-and-paste to HTML.</p>

pasting from Word and then selecting text and using the remove formatting tool

<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-left: 36pt”>This is an example of horrible Microsoft Word OLE cut-and-paste to HTML.</p>

pasting from Word and then selecting text and using the clean-up messy code tool

<p class=”MsoNormal” style=”margin-left: 36pt”><b>This</b> <i>is</i> an <u>example </u>of horrible Microsoft Word OLE <span>cut-and-paste</span> to <span style=”font-size: 22pt”>HTML</span>.</p>

Related Links

• 5 Habits for Writing on the Web
• Homepage for TinyMCE (the Rich Text Editor WordPress.com uses)
• TinyMCE example (not accurate for the plugins installed on wordpress.com)