This will be a quick post that covers the most basic types of text formatting, just so you can quickly see what each looks like (under the Astra theme) in case you haven’t tried some of them out before. Actually, what you’re reading right now is technically formatted text using the Paragraph Block. You use it so much that you hardly think of it as a format, right?
Quote Block / Quotation
Compared to a simple paragraph, the lines immediately below are what a Quote Block makes the text look like.
This is a quotation that doesn’t actually quote anything. It’s just here so you can see what a Quote Block does to the text.
-The citation goes here
The Quote Block always gives you a chance to include the Citation, but it’s something I hardly ever – okay, never – find useful. I usually have mentioned where I got the quotation from in the preceding paragraph. By the way, the dash (hyphen) you see there doesn’t get added automatically. I just put it in for the look of the thing.
Code Block
Unless you’re a computer programmer, you’ll probably never use a Code Block for its intended purpose, but I’ll show the format here because you may decide you like the look of it for other reasons.
This is a code Block.
It's supposed to contain computer program (aka, app) code.
But you could use it for other things, like showing text formatting.As you can see, I chose to highlight the Code Block in green. The background is grey by default, but you can also make it blue, orange, or red. You can also make it a Left or Right Block or change it to Blockquote.
It’s supposed to respect tabbing, but I couldn’t get that to work on my system and didn’t want to spend a lot of time trying to get it to go, since I’ll never use it after today. It did hold my spaces – the third line is indented two spaces – which is something normal HTML ignores.
Preformatted Block
Preformatted text is similar to a code block, but it uses a monospaced font. And holds spaces just like a Code Block.
You get the same color, etc. options as with a Code Block.
Pullquote Block
A pullquote is similar to a basic quote, but you’ll see there are big differences.
-The citation goes here.
I changed the Style to Solid color and then set the Main Color to green and the Text Color to yellow. It may be a little hard to read with this combo, but you get the idea.
Verse Block
Roses are red. Violets are blue. Sugar is sweet, And so are you.
Does anyone remember the original version of this verse anymore?
This block also preserves spaces. I changed the text and background colors.
Note that, for all of these blocks, I didn’t change any of the fonts themselves. Each block handled that feature all by itself, and each one did it differently.
Markdown Block
There is a Markdown Block that is related to the other formatting blocks above, but it doesn’t work the same way. Markdown is a way to format items like headings, lists, etc. without having to use the WordPress menus. It’s sort of a shorthand way to work with formats. (Anyone here know how to write in actual shorthand? Didn’t think so.) As such, I can’t easily show it to you here, so if you’re interested, you’ll just have to do a search for it elsewhere. Sorry.
Also, you’ll need the Jetpack plugin to really make use of this block.
So, that’s it for formatting. I hope you remember to use some of these formats – but don’t overdo it – from time to time.
