WordPress is a great platform for normal, everyday blog writing. Everything in a paragraph is grouped in a block. Then the paragraph ends and…
there is a blank space, followed by a block for a new paragraph. That’s great for normal everyday blog writing or web page needs. You just type what you’re composing and it appears on the screen. When it’s time to go to a different concept, you hit the enter key and the new paragraph appears.
Sometimes, though, it’s useful to format text in a different fashion. In my American Civil War Chronicles blog, I sometimes format a report or dispatch in the form that appears in the source document. See the original post for the full text of the following example (paragraphs are intentionally truncated; this is an example of the formatting).:
I’m not currently doing a lot of that as I am working to convert a backlog of draft documents into scheduled documents. Once I have that accomplished, I may do more of that kind of formatting with newly identified material.
eliminate the space between paragraphs, resulting in a traditional indented formatting that might be found in a business letter and newspaper articles.
Another place that HTML formatting can be useful is poetry. Standard WordPress formatting is not set up for the specialized formatting that is needed for that. For instance, using what I learned with formatting the civil war posts, I edited one of several poems I have posted. The following is the best WordPress can do with Brignall Banks without using HTML text coding tags:
SONG
O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there,
Would grace a summer queen:
And as I rode by Dalton Hall,
Beneath the turrets high,
A Maiden on the castle wall
Was singing merrily:
‘O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green!
I’d rather rove with Edmund there
Than reign our English Queen.’
With HTML div and span tag usage, it can be formatted to appear more like the original published version:
.This poem is one of nine in an idle blog I started in 2019. It is the only one that I have updated with the div and span tags for better formatting.
