When I cut and pasted from my original documents, the indentations didn't carry

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  timothybowe · Member · Oct 20, 2014 at 3:27 am

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  I’ve tried in both .doc and html, but when I copy and post, my indentations don’t appear in the post.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Oct 20, 2014 at 5:45 pm

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  Hi there!

  Most blogs do not indent their paragraphs – it’s just a style on the web. So when copy and pasting text into the editors, by default WordPress scrapes out that whitespace and the indentations do not appear.

  You do have some options to control indentations. The simplest solution in your case is to use the preformatted text tag, then copy+paste your content. Learn how to implement that here:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/advanced-html/#preformatted-text

  If you’re typing directly into the editor and wish to include indentations, you can do that as well:

  http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/#outdent-indent

  Best,

  -Alex G.

  Happiness Engineer | WordPress.com

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  timothybowe · Member · Oct 21, 2014 at 2:07 am

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  That didn’t work. It indented the entire document except for the first line. I am trying to post a weekly series in book format. Is there any stencil that I can use on WordPress. I read that a lot of authors use WordPress to post fictional stories.

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Oct 21, 2014 at 2:41 pm

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  Hi Timothy,

  Playing around a bit with this, I think I see what you mean. The concern using
  “pre” tag is how the pasting into the editor is scraping the indentations, not how publishing the posts handles them. I apologize, that was a misunderstanding on my part.

  Here’s the solution that seems to works best for free. In each post you’ll need to put this code:

  <div style="text-indent:23px;">
  
  //***Paste your story here***//
  
  </div>

  Using this code will affect all paragraphs, but you’ll need to have a blank line after each paragraph. For the traditional book format (with no line between paragraphs) you would need to copy+paste each paragraph in between this code.

  The indentations won’t appear in the editor, but will appear in the post.
  Screenshot of editor
  Screenshot of example post

  If you have the Premium plan we can create some Custom CSS that will automattically indent all paragraphs for you in each post, but that is a paid feature. Let me know if you’d like to set that up and I can walk you through that CSS.

  I’m not finding any free themes that auto-indent paragraphs, but there is a premium theme, Duet, that auto-indents paragraphs as well.

  Best,

  -Alex G.

  Happiness Engineer | WordPress.com

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  timothybowe · Member · Oct 30, 2014 at 1:50 am

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  Thanks. That did it. I will probably end up upgrading cause it was a lot of work.

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  alexjgustafson · Member · Oct 30, 2014 at 1:59 pm

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  Hi Timothy,

  Glad that worked for the time being. :)

  Do let me know if you decide to upgrade to the premium plan, and I’ll help you setup custom CSS that will indent the paragraphs for you.

  Or if you like the look of that Duet theme, it would be cheaper because premium themes are a one-time expense.

  Best,

  -Alex G.