No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there is always more to learn. As part of the Weekly Writing Challenges,…
By No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there is always more to learn. As part of the Weekly Writing Challenges, once a month, we’ll highlight a feature in the WordPress.com Dashboard and challenge you to incorporate it into your blog. We want to help you take full advantage of all the tools available on WordPress.com to make your blog the best it can be — and to make your friends jealous of your web wizardry.
To participate, tag your posts with DPchallenge or leave a link to your post in the comments. Please be sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge; obvious attempts to link-bait will be deleted. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed each Friday.
Last week, Cheri posted on the WordPress.com News blog that National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) is officially on. The idea of NaPoWriMo is to publish one poem per day during the month of April, or 30 poems in 30 days.
Depending on your poetic style, your formatting for poetry may vary quite a bit from your regular blog posts. For example, instead of new paragraphs, many writers choose line breaks or indentation between lines in their poems. In your Visual Editor on WordPress.com, you may have noticed that your spacing doesn’t always stay the same as when you first typed into the editor. By design, the editor will automatically remove any extra spaces for you so that your text appears consistent within your post.
If you’re trying to write a poem or prose, or just play around with spacing on your site, this can be frustrating. But we’ve got you covered! There are also some handy tips and tricks for adding unique formatting to your posts within your editor.
For line breaks, like
this one,
press Shift and Return at the same time on your keyboard. This lets the editor know that you don’t want to start a new paragraph, but do want to start writing on a new line.
If you want to add spacing, like indentation on a new line, select the Preformatted option in the second row of your Visual Editor.
Using the Preformatted option will let you add extra spacing, without it
being removed by the editor.
Just like I did
here.
For this week’s challenge, write us a poem. The poem can be about anything you choose, and in any style you choose. The catch: play around with the formatting in your verse by following the tips we’ve shared in this post, or taking a look at our Writing and Formatting Poetry guide for more in-depth instructions.
As always, if you have any questions about these tips and tricks, let us know in the comments and we’ll be here to help.
The Daily Post 
I have been wondering how to do these things, thank you!
LikeLike
Of course you have!
LikeLike
Hmmm… I don’t know how we would fit this one into the format of our gallery site. We do like to keep the look and style of the text consistent, so we might have to sit this one out. But it’s a great challenge nonetheless! Looking forward to reading what others come up with.
LikeLike
I detect a psychic Daily Post connection.
Just before we get frustrated enough to ask
But interested enough to care
You respond
Thank you!
Twenty-two poems to go. : )
Publish reformatting has been annoying.
Problem solved
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Blog It or Lose It! and commented:
This will help answer some of the questions you may have had about WordPress’s spacing issues.
LikeLike
Just a note to say that there is an error in the Writing & Formatting Poetry guide that you’ve linked to. In the Summary section it says to use the ampersand nbsp for new lines – this won’t work – it will just add an extra space – it’s shift + enter for the new line. Later in the page it explains it correctly – just pointing this out as it might cause confusion.
LikeLike
I’ve just fixed this up – thanks so much for letting us know!
LikeLike
No problem 🙂
LikeLike
I think I asked the wrong question. This is about spacing
LikeLike
I have a poem i copied from a page in poetry, I have always admired this poet, I thought I should share her thoughts in my blog during this national poetry month. I gave her credit, I even did a small introduction about her. Is it wrong to publish her work on my page?
LikeLike
Great question! Crediting someone else’s work is really important, so it is always best to add a link back to the original source. If you’re sharing the full poem on your site, it’s a good rule of thumb to ask the author for permission.
LikeLike
http://thoughtsofalunatic.com/2013/04/08/innocence-lost/
LikeLike
Reblogged this on T.V.Bagwell.
LikeLike
Used your format suggestion, made my first NaPoWriMo entry (which is eight days late), and wrote something inspired by this weekly challenge’s title. I think I did alright 🙂 http://flyforicarus.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/play-on-preposition-with-space-my-first-napowrimo/
not too crazy about the font though 🙂
LikeLike
This one looks like tons of fun! I love poetry, it’s something I’ve learned to enjoy since my elementary school days. Looking forward to reading everyone’s poems 🙂
LikeLike
Oh, my goodness, THANK YOU! This just saved me a lot of time and effort trying to figure you out on my own. Can I just say, I love you Daily Post!!
LikeLike
*it* – trying to figure out it on my own.
LikeLike
I’m glad to hear that!
LikeLike
This is really helpful. My writing style incorporates a lot of “asides” and “statements” as I write. This would help freshen up the bolded texts and allow more movement throughout the page.
Thanks for the tip!
LikeLike
http://incsynckupsa.wordpress.com/
LikeLike
This is really helpful, It answered one of my questions about this option, thank you so much
LikeLike
pretty cool idea, thanks it really helps much !
LikeLike
I did my verse page some time ago. I have a slightly bigger font, and play with indentations and font sizes particularly with “What is truth, said jesting Pilate” about 2/3 of the way down.
LikeLike
A poem I wrote the other day, entitled “An Anthem to Old Affinities.” I really enjoyed playing around with the formatting and learned a LOT through this exercise — thanks!
http://playingfortimeblog.com/2013/04/05/an-anthem-to-old-affinities/
LikeLike
Here is my contribution: http://samsonlinejournal.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/love-is/
LikeLike
I hadn’t really considered writing my own HTML before, simply because I figured it would be too hard, but one excellent guide to writing and formatting poetry (thank you WordPress !) and some time later, here’s what I ended up with:
http://crumblingwords.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/the-nightmares/
LikeLike
Entry for this week – http://mihirkamat.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/i-brought-my-heart/
Being creative with white space is harder than it looks!
LikeLike
just in time for this week’s challenge. i wrote this poem at lake chabot lake on a warm sunny day amid a cacophony of revelers nearby.
http://wp.me/p6FwZ-14L
LikeLike
I gave it a go –> http://comfortablynumb7.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/weekly-writing-challenge-my-strength/
I couldnt figure out how to remove the grey box behind it though and it liked cutting off a bit of text BUT I got there in the end
LikeLike
I got it to work too!!! Thank you, because I have always been so frustrated after constantly updating my posts but not seeing the actual spaces show up 🙂
http://neverstationary.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/the-evolution-of-a-girl/
– Catherine, from Never Stationary
LikeLike
How did you get some of the sentences to variate and center instead of all left margin side? I experimented with the ctrl shift which is great because I never knew what preformatted was..I only learned about the different size font by the choices re ‘Heading’ 1 2 etc. but controlling where the sentence begins has always stumped me….Diane
LikeLike
I think I just got my answer . I should have read the information by link to writing and formatting poetry… if I have it right you have it in ‘preformatted and the spaces you put in will remain… Any time I tried this before the spaces would not stay there but that’s before I knew about the preformatted… I’ll do some more experimenting…Diane my site is hometogo232.wordpress.com
LikeLike
That’s right, using the Preformatted option will let you keep your spaces intact. If you’re still running into trouble, just let me know!
LikeLike
I used the preformatted but can I not now change any of the font size…I tried in vain…Diane
LikeLike
Should I have done the poem in paragraph and only used the preformatted to adjust the lines? I am guessing that I cannot change the size of any of it now…Diane
LikeLike
I just sent you an email so I can take a look at the post with you. 🙂
LikeLike
8/30 is my first post for this challenge but ive back-posted poem from 1/3 on my blog – i hope that’s OK? Enjoy! http://wp.me/p3nOuY-3
LikeLike
Thanks for this! I wrote a short poem on Sunday and couldn’t work out the spacing, so I had to use another program to superimpose it onto a photo, then use ‘Add Media’ to insert it into the post! Very happy to have a much simpler solution!!
LikeLike
It took some fiddling and stuffing around to get the formatting right but here it is :- http://honestpuck.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-poem/
LikeLike
Here is my poem http://norwegianlens.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/poem/
LikeLike
Let’s Get Happy.
http://wp.me/p2QBOc-7C
LikeLike