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Formatting Text in Contribute
Paragraphs and Line Breaks
When you press the Enter key on your keyboard, Contribute automatically starts a new paragraph, or, if you're in the middle of a numbered or bulleted list, a new list item. Press Shift-Enter if you want to create an ordinary line break.
Headings
Headings provide visual and semantic cues to the user about how information on your page is organized. In the personal template, your name and title should be formatted as Heading 1 or H1. It is the largest text on your page. No other element on your page should be formatted using H1.
Subsequent headings can be in a parallel series (all the subheadings in the personal.dwt template are Heading 2 or H2) and/or nested -- i.e., subsections of material under an H2 heading could be further organized under H3 headings, and so on. In order to pass accessibility requirements, headings have to be properly "nested," without skips. For example, you can not follow an H3 with an H5 without an H4 in between.
You can select the formatting of your headings by selecting the text, right-clicking, and selecting Style. Heading format can also be selected using the style-preview menu in the upper-left- hand corner of the document window (circled). To remove heading format, set the style-preview menu to "Normal."
Styling text
You can impose styles defined in the style sheet on individual words, a line of text, or whole paragraphs by selecting the text, right-clicking, and selecting Style. Style can also be selected using the style-preview menu in the upper-left- hand corner of the document window (circled above).
See the Style Demo Sheet for examples of Oviatt Library web site styles.
Bold and Italics
You can format text as bold or italic by selecting
it with your mouse, then clicking the B or I
icon in the formatting toolbar (circled below).
Underlining
The HTML code most commonly used to underline text is no longer part of the accepted standard determined by the World Wide Web Consortium. Users expect underlined text to function as a link, therefore underlining non-linked text poses accessibility problems.
APA and the Chicago Manual have accommodated this change by modifying their citation format: in online documents they recommend the use of italics where underlining formerly was used. However, the MLA still prefers that titles of books and periodicals be underlined, even in electronic documents.
To underline titles where MLA citation format is required or demonstrated (and please do it only in these instances), select the text with your mouse, right-click, and select Underline.
Simple Lists
To create a numbered or bulleted list, type the first item in the list,
select the item, and click either the numbered list or bulleted list button
in the formatting toolbar (circled below). To begin a new list item, press
the Enter key on your keyboard. To get out of the list
format, click the list button in the toolbar again.
TIP: You can convert a series of paragraphs into a list simply by selected them and clicking one of the list buttons.
In Contribute, you can set the style an ordered list uses (e.g. I, II, III. . . a, b, c . . .) by selecting the list with your mouse, then right-clicking and selecting List > Properties.
Don't like bullets? Contribute users can also make the bullets in an unordered invisible by applying the nobull style:
- Create a bulleted list of items, or select a bunch of paragraphs, and make them into a bulleted list by clicking the bulleted list button in the toolbar.
- Select all the list items with your mouse.
- Right-click on the selected items, then select Style > nobull.
Definition Lists
When you have a series of annotated items (links to bibliographical resources, for example), you may want to use a definition list format, like this one:
- Literature Resource Center
- Provides one search access to Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature.
- MLA International Bibliography
- Indexes 4000 journals and series in literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore, 1963-
To create a definition list, type or copy your text into the page, then
place your cursor somewhere near the beginning of the first item. Right-click,
select List > Definition List.
Contribute will indent the text block to position the beginning of the list.
To separate out the annotation, place your cursor at its beginning and press the Enter key. Press the Enter key at the end of the annotation to create another term-annotation pair.
Indenting
You can embed a list in another list by selecting the list items and clicking the right indent button. You can un-embed the list by clicking the left outdent button (both are circled below).
When you press the <Enter> key, the stylesheet will automatically create a left-indented paragraph that will fall to the right of H1, H2, H3, and H4. If you want to indent non-list text further than the default, do not use the indent button, as Contribute will apply inappropriate <blockquote> tags to achieve this, which violates accessibility requirements. Use the indent1, indent2, indent3, etc. styles in the style sheet. See "Styling Text" section above for instructions on applying styles.)
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