General Formatting Tips

• Avoid using ALL CAPS in text and in headlines. Just as in an email, using all caps creates the feeling that you're shouting at your readers.
  

• Similarly, avoid using “Header” style for anything other than actual headlines. This also creates a negative shouting effect.
  

• Avoid using more than two formatting styles in either headlines or body text. Using bold, italic, and underlining on one word or phrase is overkill.
  

• Using lots of exclamation points in headlines and text will end up having the opposite effect!!! They lose their emphasis, people will start to read over them, and you'll appear to be shouting!!! Use judiciously!!!
  

• Similarly, avoid using italic or boldface text for large blocks of text. Consider this rule: If everything is bold, then nothing is bold. Save bold and italic formatting for when you want to emphasize a word, phrase, or subhead. Then it will really stand out.
  
  
• Consistency is key. You should decide whether you want to use italics or bold for emphasis and stick with your decision throughout the site. Ideally, you should use bold for emphasis of keywords/phrases and italics for things like names of books and films (like in AP style).
  

Formatting Text Using a Table

Formatting text can be a little tricky at first. Keep in mind that Wetpaint pages are HTML webpages so it might not work exactly like the word processing application that you are used to. This is an example of a paragraph that has been added within a table. Adding the text within a table allows me to designate a set pixel width so that the text does not shift around as the window is resized. It will also help to make sure that the text appears the same for someone viewing the page with a different screen resolution. Another bonus is that I can indent the first line of text and then use a carriage return and outdent everything below it. Try it out. Resize your browser window and notice how all the text outside of this table moves around but this text stays put. Pretty cool huh?

Avoid Blank Pages