Text

Understand how to add and edit copy.

The Text Editor

It’s unlikely that you’ll want a website that doesn’t include a significant amount of text. The process of adding text is fairly straightforward and you’ll find you have access to many of the formatting options you’d find with other text editors. 

Once you’re in Edit mode, you’ll want to click controls in the top left hand corner, in the blue bar. If you can’t see this blue bar, you either aren’t logged in or don’t have rights to edit this particular page (see the getting started page for help on logging in/understanding the basics). 

Under controls, you’ll see the option cms, hover over this then click content. You’ll now see a box that you can drop into any of the grey striped placeholders on your page template. Having done so, you’ll have access to a fairly standard What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. 

Each of the options you have in this editor are similar to those that you’d find in other WYSIWYG editors like Word etc. However, some further explanation of each option can be found below. 

Icon	Name	Purpose
	Source	Allows you to switch your view to see the HTML code.
	Paste as plain text	Will paste any text you have copied to your clipboard withoutany formatting.
	Spell checker	Allows you to run a spelling check.
	Bold, Italic and underline	Do what they say on the tin.
	Insert/Remove Numbered List and Insert/Remove Bulleted List	Create a list of bullet points that are numbered and a list of plain bullet points, respectively.
	Block quote	Makes your highlighted text a quote, which can be styled differently to other text. This styling can be easily customised by us.
	Align Left/Center/Align Right/Justify	Provide different options for how the highlighted text should sit inside its content block.
	Link/Unlink	Allows you to add/remove a hyperlink to another page on the site, an external web page, or an anchor. Consult the hyperlinks page for more information.
	Anchor	Places a tag which you can name. You can then add a hyperlink which links to this particular anchor/area on the page. Consult the hyperlinks page for more information.
	Image	Allows you to insert an image from the file manager or your local computer. Consult the images page for more information.
	Table	Inserts a customisable table. Consult the tables page for more information.
	Iframe	Allows you to insert an iframe, which is a particular type of content that is stored elsewhere on the internet, but which can be embedded on your site. Videos are often embedded inside an iframe. Consult the videos page for more information.
	Insert Font Awesome	Allows you to insert different in-line icons.
	Insert horizontal line	Inserts a line that runs horizontally across the width of the content block, breaking up the text.

The final drop down allows you to change what type of formatting this particular piece of text should have. These options are described in more detail below. 

Text types

Adding text to a webpage is one thing, but your content should also be well organised. Good organisation is key for two reasons:

• Ensuring users can easily find what they are looking for;
• Ensuring your content is easily navigable for people using web aids like screen-readers (thus improving accessibility). 

To help with this, you can organise your text into paragraphs and divide these into sections using relevant headings. These headings have a standard hierarchy and can have different formatting/styling applied to them depending on your design needs/brand guidelines etc. 

The following hierarchy of heading types (1-4) should be used when organising your content. 

• Heading 1 (Main heading)
  • Heading 2 (Sub heading)
    • Heading 3 (Sub Sub Heading)
    • Heading 3 (Sub Sub Heading)
    • Heading 3 (Sub Sub Heading)
  • Heading 2 (Sub heading)
    • Heading 3 (Sub Sub Heading)
      • Heading 4 (Sub Sub Sub heading)
      • Heading 4 (Sub Sub Sub heading)
      • Heading 4 (Sub Sub Sub heading)
    • Heading 3 (Sub Sub heading)
  • Heading 2 (Sub heading)

To think of this in other terms, Heading 1 is your most important heading, usually just the page title. It should give your user an idea of what this page is about. 

Each Heading 2 splits the page content into more easily digestible and navigable sections. If one of these sections needs to be split into smaller chunks, then you can use Heading 3 to do this, and so on. 

   Top accessibility tips

• Keep it simple. Your text should be easy to read and understand. Users want to get the information they need quickly and easily. 
• Keep it short. No one likes reading enormous chunks of text looking for one particular part of it. 
• Keep it organised. Users should be able to scan headings for what they want. People using screen readers will also navigate the page using the heading structure. So if this doesn’t make sense, you’ll lose a user.