There are three keyboard shortcuts that are hard to forget: cut, copy and paste. The copy-paste functions are one of the most useful shortcuts you’ll ever use when it comes to typing. On a basic level, people utilize this when they need to copy names, addresses, numbers, and other information to avoid making mistakes. Other times, people have used it for things like relocating texts or images in a document.
These days, we use it to copy information or quotes from websites to cite them. However, copying text from one website brings some unwanted formatting to your page. Some word format changes may go unnoticed, but they make a bad impression on the SEO and extra codes could slow down the page.
Tips to remember
Copying text from a website might also copy certain styles and this foreign style, if not checked, will make some portions of your article look out of place. If you are working on WordPress and are facing formatting issues, then the following tips will help you keep your copies clean.
1. Switch to Text/HTML editor
After copy-pasting the desired content, go to the Text Editor on the top-right of the WordPress editor. Look for tags such as ‘p:span’ or ‘<p><span></span></p>’, ‘<div></div>’, or like breaks such as ‘ .’ These tags will affect the formatting of your text and are not needed by the WordPress at all. Delete these tags to take the formatting out of your text.
2. Paste as plain text
Another way to separate the formatting from the text you want to copy-paste, you can use the “paste as plain text” function which you can utilize when you do a right-click. This should safeguard your style, but it is always advisable to check the Text Editor page to make sure there are no extra codes.
3. Raw Text Editor
Another way to go about it is using a word processing software like Microsoft Word. If you paste your copied content first on that and copy that text from the word processor to WordPress, the original style won’t be pasted on WordPress.
4. Use the tool
WordPress is aware of formatting styles, so it goes to show that they have a dedicated function to clear any unwanted formatting. If you want to stay on the safe side, you can use the ‘Clear Formatting’ tool on top of the editor. This tool will remove any extra style information that you do not need.
5. A trick from our very own
Finally, Christopher Isak, our very own CEO of TechAcute, has a neat hack that will help you take care of the formatting of the URLs. If you want to copy a URL, and we all know you can not make a mistake there, you can just paste it on the address bar first, and then copy-paste in the text editor. This should solve the foreign style information issue.
These tips might seem simple, but these will definitely help in avoiding any formatting issues when it comes to copy-pasting text. Do you have other tips you want to share? Comment below and tell us how you do it.
Photo credits: The feature image and images in the article have been taken by the author and Christopher Isak for TechAcute.
Sources: Jon Martindale (Digital Trends) / WordPress
