Normal text

Normal text is the plain body text of a page: what you get as soon as you start typing, and what most of any page is made of. Headings, lists, tables and every other element sit between paragraphs of it.

This page is about the paragraph itself: turning other text back into it, breaking a line without starting a new paragraph, and aligning and indenting it. Formatting the words inside, such as bold or color, has pages of its own: Text formatting and Colors.

Insert it

You rarely need a command for it: pressing Enter at the end of a paragraph or a heading starts a new paragraph of normal text. The commands are for turning something back into it. Type /text after a space at the end of a heading, press Enter, and the heading becomes an ordinary paragraph with the same words.

• The style menu. At the left of the toolbar, the menu that reads Normal text (Aa Style on a phone). Choose Normal text.

• Keyboard: Ctrl+Alt+0 (⌘+Option+0 on a Mac).

• Clear formatting: Ctrl+\ (⌘+\ on a Mac) removes all formatting from the selected text, and also turns a heading back into normal text and resets its alignment and indentation.

Normal text is not in the + menu: that menu is for inserting elements, and normal text is what is already there.

What a paragraph can do, and when to use it

A plain paragraph

This is one. Use plain paragraphs for everything that is not a heading, a list or a special block: explanations, background, the story of what happened. Keep them short, three or four sentences, and give each one idea. Short paragraphs are easy to read on a phone and easy to skim on a computer.

Formatted words

Inside a paragraph, words can be bold, italic, underlined, struck through, code, highlighted or colored, and you can write chemistry and math such as H₂O and 10³.

Use them for a reason a reader can see: bold for the one phrase a skimmer must not miss, italic for a title or a new term, code for anything typed exactly, such as a file name. A paragraph with half its words in bold has nothing that stands out. Each is explained, with its shortcut, in Text formatting and Colors.

Line breaks inside a paragraph

Kestrel Software
1200 Harbor Street, Suite 4
Springfield

Press Shift+Enter to start a new line without starting a new paragraph. The lines stay together as one paragraph, with no gap between them, like the address above. Use it where lines belong together: an address, the lines of a signature, a short verse. For anything else, press Enter and start a new paragraph.

Alignment

Aligned left, the default. Every line starts at the same place, which is what makes text easy to read. Leave body text like this.

Centered. For a short line that stands on its own, such as a motto under a heading.

Aligned right. Rarely needed: a sign-off, or a date at the end of a letter.

Justified. Both edges are straight, and the spaces between the words stretch to fit. It suits long printed text, but in a narrow window it can leave wide gaps between words, so use it sparingly, and never for a line or two.

Set alignment from the Alignment menu on the toolbar, or with Ctrl+Shift+L, E, R and J for left, center, right and justified (⌘+Shift on a Mac). Headings can be aligned too. More in Alignment and indentation.

Indentation

Indented one step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Four steps, as far as it goes.

Indenting moves a whole paragraph to the right, to set it under the one before, such as a note that belongs to the line above it. Use the Indent and Outdent buttons on the toolbar, or Ctrl+] and Ctrl+[ (⌘+] and ⌘+[ on a Mac). The Tab key does not indent a paragraph: it is kept for lists and tables. To show structure, a list is usually clearer than indented paragraphs.

Changing and removing it

Normal text has nothing to remove: it is what is left when everything else is taken away. To turn a paragraph into something else, put the cursor in it and choose the other style, or type its command after a space at the end of the line: /h2 makes it a heading, /quote a quotation, /ul a bullet list.

Clear formatting (Ctrl+\) takes selected text back to plain: no bold, no color, no alignment and no indent.

Good practice

• One idea to a paragraph. When a paragraph changes subject, start a new one.

• Make a heading a heading. A line of bold text looks like a heading, but a table of contents does not list it and nobody can link to it. Use Headings.

• Reach for a list when you find yourself writing “first…, then…, and finally…”.

• Keep body text aligned left. Centered and justified paragraphs are harder to read the longer they get.

Related elements

• Headings give a page its sections.

• Bullet list and Ordered list break a run of points out of a paragraph.

• Blockquote sets apart someone else’s words; Panels make your own stand out.