How Do I Make the Listing Stay Straight?

Question

I have entered a listing of events but I do not know how to make them stay in order after saving.   How do I tell the program not to recombine the information into normal sentences this time?  Sam

Comments

Nice bio Sam

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Hi, Sam --

To add to the great advice you've already gotten, here's our Editing Tips help page:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Editing_Tips

I hope you have fun playing around with some of the other nifty formatting techniques. :-)

Answer 1

If you only enter 1 "ENTER", it normally starts you one a new line, but in wiki code, what is called "white space" is automatically removed.  This is why 1 line only shows on the edit page but not on the view page.  If you use the code:  <br />   you will get a new line on the view page.

When you allow a blank line (by pressing the "ENTER" key twice) it will show on the view page, but this skips a line, which you may not want to do.

If you use a wiki code indent character (putting a colon as the first character on a line) then you will get a new line, but this indents the line, which - again - you may not want to do.

Comments

To generate a new paragraph, it's best to hit ENTER twice instead of inserting the <br/> code.

For lists, if you put an asterisk (*) at the beginning of the line, it will create an indented entry that starts with a bullet. And a # at the beginning of each line will generate a numbered list.

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Yes, I agree, Ellen, to use the "ENTER" key twice in order to skip a line between paragraphs is easiest and best, although you could do the same thing with the break code twice (<br /><br />).

The asterisk and number symbol, when used as the first character on a line, will indent and bullet or sequential number at the start, and will also continue the indent if the item is long enough to wrap to a new line.  The colon, though, just gives you the indent, without bullets or numbers.

All three of these start on the next line, without skipping a line in between.  The only way to force a new line without skipping a line and without indenting, is to use one <br />.

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Thanks to all of you.  This is exactly what I needed.  Sam

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Gaile: To the extent possible, WikiTree tries to stick with wiki-markup for formatting instead of using HTML codes like </br>. Goodness knows that wiki-markup is confusing enough for many members -- let's not confront them with other format unless it's necessary!

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Thank you for a great answer but I now need to know how to indent a paragraph first line.  Can you tell me the code?  Sam

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Sam, you can use the space entity to add what is called a "hard space".  Entities start with the ampersand (&), followed by a few letters (that usually suggest the name of the character), and end with a semi-colon (;).  There are several websites that have lists of all the entity codes - one is http://entitycode.com/.  The code for space is:  &nbsp; (I think of the nbsp as non-breaking space).  Use as many times as you want spaces - example:

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Start after 3 space indent.

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In general, the style here does not call for indenting the first line of a paragraph.

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Ellen, I have no idea of the context where Sam wants to indent the first line of a paragraph.  I just answered his question of how to do it and, since he did not ask for an opinion on the desirability of doing it, I did not offer one - the last thing I want to do is act as some sort of style police.  I don't believe the WikiTree Style Guide specifies anything about whether paragraphs should be indented.  Even if it does, I can think of instances where an indent is desirable (i.e., in a quotation where the goal is to format the quotation as close to its appearance in the original document as possible).

Also <br />, as well as entity codes are included in the officially recommended codes for use in WikiTree profiles.  I agree that many members have a great deal of difficulty using codes, however that is not a reason to not provide the information to someone who requests it.

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Unless I have additional information, I often enter information from FindAGrave. I would like to enter it with single line spacing and I'm having a real issue.

Unless I am entering it incorrectly, the <brk /> generates an additional blank line.

Is using the : colon for indentation is my only other option?