Often times clients will come to me frustrated and at the end of their rope because the formatting of text in their blog posts or web updates is all askew. Or, they might be working with PayPal (or other shopping cart) and find that their “Buy Now” buttons don’t work when they cut and paste them into their site.
The solution is often very simple, but unless you have an intimate knowledge of working with computers, text, and code, it would never even cross your mind. In fact, I can remember the first time I did some web programming about 12 years ago and no matter what I did it wouldn’t work. Was it my code? Nope. It was the way I was handling the text.
In a nutshell … Don’t use Microsoft Word to cut and paste any text on blogs or your website. Feel free to use Word to write your articles and compose, but you need to take an intermediary step before you post it to the web. Why?
Microsoft Word often inserts stray hidden characters or dirty code behind the scenes that makes everything go awry when browsers and blogging software interpret the text. This doesn’t mean Word is bad (although there are philosophical discussions out there on that topic) but it does mean it is not the tool to use when the job is the web. Instead you need to use a straight, plain text editor. On all Windows PCs you could use Notepad which comes included. On the Mac there has to be something similar. Whether on Windows or Mac there are numerous freeware and shareware options to get more user friendly plain text applications. I personally use TextPad.
The simplest way to avoid the funny text problem is to create your content in the plain text editor. If, however, you find that a pain or you already have content created in Word, here’s what you need to do.
Copy and Paste your content from Microsoft Word into a plain text editor. You may see some odd characters in there (see, I told you it does funky things). Correct any oddities you see.
Then, Copy and Paste your text from the plain text editor into whatever application you are using to update your site (blog posting interface, Adobe Contribute, etc.). You can then use that application to add any formatting (bullets, bold, etc.) to your text. If your webmaster set up stylesheets for you to use — use them or risk inconsistencies on your site. Then, publish your content.
It may seem like extra steps to get the job done, but in the end it will yield benefits to you because things will be more likely to 1) work as intended (think those buy now buttons) and 2) display as desired.
I’ve known folks who have struggled endlessly spending countless hours trying to solve the mystery of funny text. Now you know the secret!
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