Legacy Documentation
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Text Formatting¶
ExpressionEngine has a number of text formatting options that enable you to control how text is rendered within your channel entries and comments.
Auto XHTML¶
The purpose of the Auto XHTML option is to make your content semantically and typographically correct. This feature does the following:
- Double Line Breaks are wrapped in paragraph tags:
<p>*content..*</p>
- Single Line Breaks are turned into
<br />
tags. - Double quotes are converted to curly double quotes:
"this"
becomes“this”
- Single quotes are converted to curly single quotes:
Joe's
becomesJoe’s
- Double dashes are converted to em-dashes:
This -- text
becomesthis—text
. - Three periods are converted to ellipsis:
This...
becomesthis…
In addition, the Auto XHTML feature intelligently handles text
containing block level elements, like <div>
, <blockquote>
, etc.
so that they are not wrapped in paragraph tags. Further, elements within
<pre>
tags are exempt from the paragraph conversion.
The Auto XHTML Feature can be found in the PUBLISH page of the Control Panel. You’ll see a menu below each entry field with this option. You can also configure your Comment Preferences so that any comments will be formatted this way.
Note
By default, all entries and comments are assigned to this formatting option.
Markdown¶
The Markdown option parses all of your content through a Markdown
parser and a
SmartyPants parser—the
parser follows Jon Gruber’s implementation of Markdown for the most part, but
adds a few things as well. SmartyPants transforms normal quotes into
curly quotes, consecutive dashes into en (--
into –) and em (---
into —
) dashes, and three consecutive periods into an ellipsis
(...
into …
).
Auto BR¶
This Auto BR feature simply converts each line break into an HTML
<br />
tag.
This feature can be found in the PUBLISH page of the Control Panel. Youll see a menu below each entry field with this option. You can also configure your Comment Preferences so that any comments will be formatted this way.