Today I am discussing something that plagues all of us. Hidden HTML. You might not even realize that’s what it is, but I’m sure you have encountered it at one point in time. It can be irritating for those of us that are a little OCD about how our posts look. It can even change the entire look of your blog.
What is hidden HTML and how does it get on your blog?
Do you ever copy and paste guest posts, interviews etc. from your email? Then your post looks all wonky after that right? That is hidden html or formatting. Any time you copy something from your email, a Google Doc, or even Goodreads…you run the risk copying things you don’t even know are there. Sometimes it makes your text super small. Sometimes it makes it a completely different font from the rest of your blog. On rare occasions it can change the color of every link on your blog…or make your entire background disappear! Scary stuff, huh?
How can you get rid of it?
Since it’s almost impossible to avoid I’m going to show you a few ways to get rid or it. Here is the easiest. (Which I just discovered a couple of weeks ago! Talk about doing things the hard way….)
Here is a post I have copied from my email. You can already tell that it’s going to be a different size and font from the rest of my text. So highlight the text that is copied and click the Remove Formatting Button at the top of your post box. It’s the T symbol. (see picture above). That’s it. I would think this would work most of the time, but here are two more ways to get rid of the HTML.
1.) You can copy the text that you think will give you a problem into your computer’s notepad and then to your blog post. This usually removes unwanted things too.
2.) You can go to the HTML part of your post and delete the tags yourself. This is a little difficult unless you are comfortable with HTML to begin with.
I hope that helps some of you out! I know this is a issue for a lot of people.
Let me know if there are tips and tricks you want me to discuss!
Thank you for posting this information. Very useful. I have tweeted and shared your link on Facebook.
Thank you for spreading the word on this quick fix!
Just wanted to mention that you can also just paste text in the html tab in edit posts (instead of in compose). That will paste it without any formatting.
Well, I do the thing you said and it often works, but if you click it more then once it can mess things up worse. I didn't think about copy/pasting into notebook though, I like that idea.
And if what Britt says, to paste in HTML mode works, then that would be nice!
This was great, thanks!
Why haven't I thought of this solution? I use that function sometimes but I have never thought of using it on a whole post. How silly of me. Thank you so much for this very helpful post, Lori!
This is one of my biggest pet peeves about blogging. Copying from Word documents is the worst! I love that little button.
Soooo helpful. Thank you!
Whyyy did I never know about that button before?! Thanks so much!