Note: If you’re interested in learning how to use the WordPress Text editor, I’ve included the Text contents of this post as a PNG image and a .txt file. Follow along with the post and you’ll learn just about everything you need to know!
WordPress gives you two ways to edit your posts: the Visual editor and the Text editor. Both are designed to make it (somewhat) easy to do rich-text word processing in your web browser. However, the two editors work quite differently:
The WordPress Visual editor is an attempt at a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text editor, produced as part of a third-party software project called TinyMCE. It requires no special technical knowledge and allows you to create posts using an interface similar to Microsoft Word and other text editors. However, there are also many things you can’t do with it, because of the limits of WYSIWYG editors in general, and the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor in particular.
The WordPress Text editor is an almost straightforward HTML text editor (it has a few quirks, which we discuss at the bottom). You must know basic HTML to use it properly, but it allows you to directly control the layout and appearance of your posts and pages, and to solve many problems that the Visual editor can’t address.
You can switch between these two editors as you edit any post, using the tabs at the top right of the post editing window. Clicking “Text” lets you edit the post in the Text editor, and clicking “Visual” lets you edit the post in the Visual editor.
I am always trying to encourage people to use the text editor as well. You are not alone!
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Why does the code below does not work in my text editor in WP?
Welcome
to: PATIENCE: Love Thy
Neighbor As Thyself
A
Non-Profit Organization created to help promote balanced,
respectful, and enriched relationships between people focusing on relationships
and relationships improvement.
Hi Jacquelyn, Thanks for writing! Let me paste in the code as I’m seeing it:
In there I’m seeing a fair number of line breaks, as well as a manually inserted space, denoted by the “ ” character. There are also manual line breaks after words like “Welcome,” “Thy,” and “balanced,” which the text editor will pick up. So those combined are probably causing what you’re seeing. This sort of thing could be a result of improperly pasting in from Microsoft Word or a website, I’d guess.
The following code should work:
[…] This post follows up on a post from a few months ago detailing the differences between WordPress’s Visual and Text editors. […]
[…] Learning to Love the WordPress Text Editor – WordPress gives you two ways to edit your posts: the Visual editor and the Text editor. Both are designed to make it (somewhat) easy to do rich-text word processing in your web browser. […]