April is National Poetry Month! Some people celebrate by participating in NaPoWriMo, writing 30 poems for 30 days. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or new to this month-long challenge, these five tools in your post editor can help you format and publish your poems.
Highlight with a blockquote
Use a blockquote to distinguish text, whether you want to call out multiple poems within a post or simply want to highlight text in a visual way.
Pulling the internet drip
out of my arm
I realize
all these streams
are full of nothing
To display a poem in a blockquote as shown above, place the text inside <blockquote>
and </blockquote>
tags in your HTML Editor, or by clicking the blockquote button in your Visual Editor:
Each theme displays blockquotes differently, so preview it on your site to see how it looks. You can also preview many elements of a theme, including blockquotes, on its live demo in the theme showcase.
Add extra line breaks
Play with space by adding line breaks between your text. By default, the Visual Editor leaves one blank line between each paragraph, but sometimes — especially with poetry or experimental prose — you may want more space between them.
Let’s type
a poem like this—
dancing across lines
hopping and leaping,
spreading the love.
To create a line break, insert
in your HTML Editor where you’d like a space to appear. For example, if you want three line breaks — as shown above — add this code three times:
Line breaks create visual and mental pauses in a poem. Note that if, after adding the spaces, you click back to the Visual Editor before publishing or updating your post, those spaces will be stripped out and you’ll need to reinsert the code again.
Align your text
In the top row of your Visual tab, there are three ways to align selected text. Look for the three icons that resemble lines of a paragraph — hover over them to see options to Align left, Align center, and Align right. In the following poem, we’ve selected text and clicked the Align center button to place the four lines in the center of the post.
Indent or outdent your text
When creating a post, you can indent or outdent text, pushing it further to the right or left. It’s another way to play with formatting and space:
Don’t you love the dance of words on the page?
Click increase indent once to move your words forward
and twice to jump even further
and even more, into the future.
Or click Decrease indent to return to where you began
and stay calm in this place
for another quiet moment
if you prefer.
In the second row of your Visual tab, look for the Decrease indent and Increase indent buttons in the center of the toolbar:
Change the text color
Want to experiment with the text without playing with formatting? Try changing the color of your text.
Perched over a tiny screen,
staring into the glow of the world,
like a presence in the clouds,
creating and uncreating with a click.
Highlight the word or passage you’d like to change, then click the down arrow next to the text color button (the “A” icon) to open the color picker tool. Select a shade from the palette, or click Custom for a more refined search or to enter a six-digit color code.
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Such great tips! Thank you for sharing! ❤
LikeLiked by 13 people
The info about an upcoming poetry month is useful, but the rest is really basic.
LikeLiked by 13 people
Thanks for the feedback! The majority of readers here are beginners, so wanted to provide some tools for them.
We try to mix these types of beginning blogging/publishing posts with intermediate resources (our branding, small business, and ecommerce/selling posts, for example) so there’s something for everyone.
LikeLiked by 18 people
Yes … I thought so … But, yes sometimes the Basics are needed for some Users …
LikeLiked by 6 people
I will definitely participate this upcoming month!
LikeLiked by 15 people
This was very helpful to read, considering I have very little experience with HTML formatting.
LikeLiked by 16 people
Love it, very helpful!
LikeLiked by 14 people
Thank you very much — helpful.
LikeLiked by 13 people
Quite informative and helpful, Cheri. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 14 people
Yeah 👌👌
LikeLiked by 13 people
Great tips. I’m not a poet, but I may participate 🙂
LikeLiked by 9 people
Pinned for safe keeping. X
LikeLiked by 14 people
Thank you for this much needed formatting help! I’ve run into several of these issues before.
LikeLiked by 14 people
This is so helpful! I won’t post any of my poetry on my WordPress, probably, but uhhhh I’m definitely an old lady when it comes to technology and the Internet so I definitely have issues with formatting sometimes.
LikeLiked by 15 people
very helpful! especially for a newbie like me 😁 yay
LikeLiked by 16 people
I hadn’t realised it NaNo was doing NaPo next month for poetry. I might give it a go. Thanks for the tips – my poetry is terrible so I need all the help I can get 🙂
LikeLiked by 10 people
Very helpful.. I will be participating… NaPoWriMo
LikeLiked by 10 people
Thanks a bunch!
LikeLiked by 9 people
Love this! Thanks for this! 😊
LikeLiked by 10 people
Thanks for posting!
LikeLiked by 9 people
Thank you so much – that shift/enter to get a line feed without a space is just what I’ve been looking for for months!
LikeLiked by 10 people
I was just trying to format a poem. Thanks for the tips.
LikeLiked by 10 people
Some great pieces of advice, if there is anyone I would recommend for tips it would be you. Doing some great work. Keep it all fam 👌
LikeLiked by 9 people
I’m so glad for that information so good and helpful.
LikeLiked by 10 people
Thank you for sharing this ☺
LikeLiked by 9 people
Helpful. Thanks for sharing😊
LikeLiked by 10 people
Very useful tips. Have not used the increase/decrease indent until now and the  . Thank you for publishing this in time.
LikeLiked by 12 people
Thank you for this 😀
LikeLiked by 9 people
Very helpful information 😊🎆
LikeLiked by 11 people
Useful, Thank you for sharing
LikeLiked by 9 people
Thank you so much
LikeLiked by 9 people
These are great tips! Visual presentation can make a weighty difference to your work. Thanks for the reminders, and I loved the pertinent link to poetry. Are you taking part on NaPoWriMo?
LikeLiked by 10 people
This is really helpful. I have no experience in html formatting.
LikeLiked by 8 people
This is great!
LikeLiked by 8 people
Ready to participate! Challenge accepted.
LikeLiked by 10 people
Great tips! Thank you!
LikeLiked by 10 people
Helpful tips.
LikeLiked by 11 people
This was so so helpful! Thank you so much!
LikeLiked by 10 people
Thank you so much!!
LikeLiked by 9 people
Thank you so much. The line break hack is something I have been trying to figure out. Thanks.
LikeLiked by 8 people
Thank you so much — this helped a lot.
LikeLiked by 9 people
Hello. Do kindly check my new post and help me improve. And make me feel at home here in WordPress.
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Welcome to WordPress.com. A good place to share your latest posts is the Community Pool at The Daily Post, published weekly. Here is the most recent comment thread:
https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2018/04/02/community-pool-260/
Please read the information and instructions in the post to get started. Thanks!
LikeLiked by 8 people
These are awesome tips, some of them I have yet to ever utilize. I will be sure to utilize those during this National Poetry month and beyond.
LikeLiked by 8 people
This is great. I need to join this month.
LikeLiked by 8 people
these are such fun and playful ways to style the text!! reminds me that writing poetry can just be fun and lighthearted.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Wow! This is very helpful!
LikeLiked by 7 people
Thank you for this!
LikeLiked by 7 people
So thankful for this. New to WordPress, and I want to share a lot of my poetry as well.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Hello thank you so much for the tips! I absolutely love poetry and I’m looking forward to writing some.
LikeLiked by 7 people
I love this post. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 6 people
Great advice!
LikeLiked by 6 people