Wandering text creeps to the right
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The break tag is this.
<br />not this
</br>And note the space between the “r” and the “/” .
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Sacredpath, ok, but was this meant to explain how I should have done the HTML to that post? Because now it is too late, since I delated that post and the other two that were also affected with creeping text.
What should I do now, now that the posts and incorrect HTML tags are deleted?
-Peregrine
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@lorna, when I looked at the source code of those posts, I saw all sorts of div tags around blocks of paragraphs and other things that trying to sort out exactly what was causing the issue was near impossible, especially when I could not see the error in any browser I had available to me.
This morning, the W3C validator gave up after reporting 5 errors on your main page saying
Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.
From the report that I ran last night, you have a ton of invalid code and improperly nested HTML tags and the combination of all those is likely what is causing your issues. My version of Safari, when I looked at the errors on your page told me that I was actually fixing all the issues so that the page would display properly.
This is what you need to do, and I would suggest that you do it with at least ten or twenty of your posts just for good measure.
Go to settings > writing and select “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” and then click “save changes.”
Now, starting with your latest post, open it in the editor, switch from the visual tab to the HTML tab (waiting for the page to refresh) and then switch back to the visual tag (again waiting for it to refresh), and then click “update post.” Check your blog and if it is back to normal, you are golden. If not, open the next post and do the same thing till it goes back to normal.
This process should at least fix the invalid nesting of HTML tags.
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Dear SacredPath, thanks so much for this.
I will do what you say, but you know, I did the same thing last night when you suggested it. When it did not work, I deleted the three offending posts, which left me, as you already know, with the same problem happening to the posts that were unharmed and that became the subsequent new/top of the page posts.I do not understand why there was so much HTML error when all I did was work on one post (I think!) in the HTML mode.
OK. I will go now to have a snack downstairs and gird up for doing this all over again.
Oh, by the way, I decided what the heck, and I added about two more new posts this morning, just to see if my luck would change and the problem would disappear. No such luck. The right sidebar is way way down low on the page and the creeping text still flows to the right margin.God, I wish I had some chocolate fudge brownies to lift my spirits. 8-(
-Peregrine bla bla bla
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@thesacredpath
I looked at this too and it appears most of the content in the posts is being copied and pasted without using the correct icons to strip the extraneous code out prior to posting.If I am correct then in the future this blogger needs to use the correct process for copying and pasting blog post content from elsewhere on the internet. That amounts to clicking the kitchen sink icon at the end of Row 1 in the Visual editor so Row 2 appears. Then clicking the Row 2 Number 5 Paste as Plain Text icon http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#pasting-text
and pasting the text into the pop-up box that appears. And lastly, clicking “insert into post”. -
Dear SacredPath: HOORAY! YAY! YOUR FIX WORKED! Thank you! But let me say: That part about going to Settings>Writing, etc: I had that thing checked already.
The secret might seem like a little thing, but it is what made the difference this time. Last night I tried, I think, one post, without success, and I gave up in dire need of chocolate reinforcement. Today, as per your instruction, I went through three posts and the third post was the successful one. I am so relieved! thank you again. And thank you for explaining it so explicitly. With me, it’s better to assume that I know nothing. Really.
And dear TIMETHIEF: Thank you for that link in the support section. I clicked it and I saw a bunch of instructions that I was never aware of and never saw before. I will read it. Thank you for pointing it out. That is a gold mine page of support.
Everything is fine and I am awfully happy again.
-Peregrine, flying high with wind beneath her wings
I would put that in italics but I am not sue how, looking at the markup instructions below. It makes no sense to me. -
TimeThief: I went back to that Visual Editor support page and realized that actually I knew a lot of the information! When I first glanced at it from your post, I did not actually read individual paragraphs; I just knew that it was specific information that would be very handy.
It turns out, after i read everything, that there were two things that I never knew about or used:
(1) The Keep Linebreaks option for when you paste text into the Simple Editor box. (Lucky for me I never deselected it.)
(2) Custom characters
What I really have to learn m ore of is HTML tags. I have noticed that they seem to be different depending on who tells you.
What I have learned is that knowing just a little bit of HTML and attempting to use it can really get a novice into trouble. I fiddled around last night with the HTML to make the text stay underneath a picture and not creep up to lie next to it, and I think that that is what messed it all up.
-Peregrine
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This will prevent you from having this trouble again in the future. I remember that this is an ONGOING problem for you, and we have helped you with it several times previously.
1) go to your Settings->General and select “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML”
2) when you paste anything in, ANYTHING, use the “Paste as plain text” function (the little clipboard icon with the T on it) and then add links and so on after it’s pasted in.
If you do both those things, then this problem will not ever happen again.
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Dear Raincoaster: You wrote:
2) when you paste anything in, ANYTHING, use the “Paste as plain text” function (the little clipboard icon with the T on it) and then add links and so on after it’s pasted in.
I wish I had known this when I first started blogging at WordPress. I have used the Paste AS Simple Text link at times, but usually when the text to be pasted was outrageously formatted, very large, etc. I never thought that any time I paste, it is wise to use this option. Most of the time, it is not necessary, but when it is, it really is.
Thanks a lot. I forget so easily. And then if I stop blogging, as I did in December 2010, and then return, I return with a lot of things forgotten. Getting older also has a lot to do with it.
-Peregrine
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Yes, it’s good to get in the habit of best practices right from the start, but better late than never. Even I’ve screwed up my blog with the copy/paste and had to go back to the Plain Text paste which I should have been doing all along.
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