WordPress® 24-Hour Trainer

Chapter 8. Laying Out Text

Now that you know how to style bits of text, it's time to look at styling larger blocks using the Text Editor and laying out entire posts. In this lesson you learn how the Text Editor behaves and tips for how to arrange your written content effectively. In the end, it always comes down to what's easiest for your visitors to read.

Styling Paragraphs

I'm using the term paragraph to refer to any block of text that you've separated in the Text Editor by using the Enter key. That's because in HTML terms, the Text Editor sees any text separated in that way — even a single sentence — as a paragraph.

Aligning

To change the alignment of a paragraph, you simply need to click anywhere in the paragraph (there's no need to highlight the whole paragraph, though you can) and then click the appropriate alignment button — left, center, and right appear on the top row of the button bar.

There's a fourth alignment button that's only visible on the second row of the button bar, and that's for justified alignment. This is when text lines up flush on the left and the right, as shown in Figure 8-1.

Though the symmetry of this look pleases one part of my brain, there's another part that says "isn't that gap between words the same gap that indicates the end of a sentence?" Still worse is when justification is used on very narrow paragraphs, resulting in gigantic gaps between words. As a rule, I never use justification, but if you do, make sure your aesthetics aren't getting in the way ...