Four Features to Publish Your Poems
A roundup of tools in your Post Editor to help with formatting, spacing, and publishing your poems, just in time to begin National Poetry Writing Month.
Earlier today, we kicked off National Poetry Writing Month, also known as NaPoWriMo. Since you’ll be writing a poem each day, here are four easy-to-use features in your Post Editor to help with publishing your poetry.
Blockquotes
When you format your poems, consider blockquotes to call out bits of text. You can display text in a blockquote by placing it inside <blockquote>
and </blockquote>
tags in your Text Editor, or by clicking the blockquote button in your Visual Editor:
Here’s an example of how text is displayed in a blockquote:
Sifting through my Camera Roll
thousands of images not posted online
I hunt through my library
see the outtakes
and rejects of my days
the stuff I’d felt wasn’t good enough to share
yet these are the photos
unshared, unfiltered
that really tell my stories
Preformatted text
You can also use preformatted text to distinguish text within a post, placing it inside the <pre>
and </pre>
tags when drafting in your Text Editor. The blogger at City Jackdaw uses preformatted text for poetry; here’s an excerpt from a poem titled “Wolf River Blues”:
I lie on my back and watch the sky, much as I did in childhood; it is the same. Back flat to the earth, a dowsing rod of bone, feet pointing to the sibilant stream...
In the Visual Editor, selecting text and choosing the “pre” setting in the style drop-down menu produces the same effect:
Indents and outdents
When you’re creating a post, you can indent and outdent text. In your Visual Editor, look for the Decrease indent and Increase indent buttons, just underneath the icons to insert and remove links:
It’s a simple way to play with formatting and space, like so:
I love the dance of words on the page
Hit increase indent once to move your words forward
And press it again to jump a bit further
And even more, into the future
Keep clicking Decrease indent to return to where you started
And stay in the same place
The same moment in time
If you prefer
Extra line breaks
Another easy, simple way to play with space is to add extra line breaks. The Visual Editor leaves one blank line between each paragraph. But sometimes, especially with poems or experimental prose, you want more space between your paragraphs.
To add a line break, insert
in your Text Editor where you’d like a space to appear. You’ll add this code as many times as you want blank lines. So for example, if you want three blank lines between two paragraphs, add the following in your Text Editor:
Adding line breaks is a way to create pauses or to draw out moments in your poems, or simply to explore the dance between words and space. Note: If, after adding those spaces, you click back to the Visual Editor before publishing or updating your post, those spaces will be stripped out again.
For more tips on formatting and styling, read the support pages on styling posts and pages and the Visual Editor.
- April 1, 2014
- Better Blogging, Features, WordPress.com, Writing
I don’t think I’ll have time to post a poem a day this month, but I’ll try to throw a few in when I can. 🙂 Thanks for the tips!
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I support and do love poetry and music. Lyrics and words create an inspiration beyond measure.
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Yeah, I’ve been using the quote thing for my poetry. I don’t like it, but I figured out that’s the only way. I might give the Preformatted text a whirl, see what happens. Thanks for the tips, guys!
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What I ended up doing last year was writing the poem in the visual editor – then switching to the text editor to remove the extra blank lines in the same verse.
That gave me the format I wanted.
David
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@postaldeliveries – thanks for that little tip about using the text editor to remove the lines – that works for me. It really improves the appearance of the text on screen. Now, if only I could improve my poetry…
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I write a fair amount of poetry but have resisted the temptation so far to blog my poems. Appreciate the tools though that WordPress provides. Poetry is a very important art form. WordPress, thank you for keeping poetry alive and accessible!
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Thanks! This is exactly what I needed.
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Just out of curiosity, how many and what tags do y’all use when trying to capture a poem? I know tags can be useful, but I’m not totally sure how to incorporate them into my blog posts. Any feedback would be appreciated, I’m pretty new to this.
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Wow, I’m glad I asked because I have been doing it totally differently. In the past I’ve assigned tags based on the content/subject of the individual poem. I’ll take your advice and see how it goes. Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate this post about the publishing of poems. I’ve really been struggling with this since last year, so you can imagine…
Now I can look forward to it not taking 3x as long to publish, as it did to write the poem! 😉
I truly enjoy blogging on the WordPress platform. 😀
God bless you and Shalom! Beth
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Block quotes–depends on your theme.
The space doesn’t always stick, especially if you move back and forth between editors.
The Pre tag, though–that works.
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Thanks for the info. Exactly what I had needed.
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I sometimes use italics for the poem.
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Awesome! Thanks for the tips and encouragement.
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I like the block quote feature the best. Italics I reserve just for a few words.
Serifs = are the tiny feet at the bottom of letters or top limbs of letters. They are derived from older European calligraphic style of writing….meaning prior to 18th century or so.
One learns by taking hand ink calligraphy. An increasingly lost art due to computers. The rule that we did learn in my advanced calligraphy courses was only 2 different complementary styles were necessary. Tradition yes, but also legibility and artistic harmony for the 21st century.
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Posting poetry makes me pull my hair and mutter bad things.
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I found some poems that I wrote when I was in Seminary ten years ago and I will expand them into Blogs as I work on discipline for my WordPress writing.
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How are poems seen by others — is there a URL or something?
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If your site is part of the NaPoWriMo showcase, you can browse participating blogs there. Within our own WordPress.com Reader, if you tag your poems this month with “NaPoWriMo,” other bloggers can find your posts in the NaPoWriMo tag page.
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I can’t post my blog on the NaPoWrimo link because it says wordpress already used????
What can I do? Thank you?
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Hi Linda — for support with the NaPoWriMo site, you should inquire there — on their FAQ site, the email listed is napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.
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Very helpful!
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Awesome! Gotta make time for writing poems!
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Hmm. Nice tips! I’ll have to figure out what kind poem to write suited to my site though!
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I got the same error as Linda. I sent an email to the address listed and got a permanent delivery failure message.
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Just got to throw this tip out there, after having problems with the
n b s p ;
and indents when I go back to edit old poems. I find
…
more useful, you can put in as many dots (or any character) as you need for the horizontal space and doesn’t get messed up when you switch from “Visual” to “Text” then back again.
Just my two cents after five years of poetry blogging. 🙂
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(Reposting the comment, because the last attempt got automatically formatted.)
Just got to throw this tip out there, after having problems with the
n b s p ;
and indents when I go back to edit old poems. I find
(less than symbol) span style=”visibility: hidden;” (greater than symbol)…(less than symbol)/span(greater than symbol)
more useful, you can put in as many dots (or any character) as you need for the horizontal space and doesn’t get messed up when you switch from “Visual” to “Text” then back again.
Just my two cents after five years of poetry blogging. 🙂
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Totally agree with @christrocks. I’d have to make do with posting a poem or two this month. All the same, I think this NaPoWriMo is a lovely idea from WordPress.
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Thanks. Such tips are always handy. Please keep releasing (or even repeating) them.
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Interesting. I have 10 tips for writing poetry on my blog. 🙂
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Cheri, I did not get the daily post prompt today. Has something changed?
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Hi there — today’s prompt is here: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/dp_prompt/have-you-never-been-mellow/
We just launched the redesign of The Daily Post, so yes, things have changed! Today’s post explains this a bit.
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