How to copy and paste text
Copying text from another application and pasting it into RapidWeaver is a huge timesaver and saves you tons of typing. But there's one thing to remember: never, ever, paste text that contains styles. Did I say never? Yes, and I meant it. Never.At first glance, it looks like a good idea. You think 'Ah, I can paste this text that I styled in Word and it'll come out looking the same, so I don't have to bother styling it in RapidWeaver; cool!'. Well my advice is: bother. Take a look at this:
That's pasted text, from a Word document. Looks fine, doesn't it? Now, see what the same Word document looks like opened in a text editor, which displays all the hidden formatting that Word uses:
Yuck. If you paste direct from a Word document, that's what you're pasting, even if you can't see it. And no HTML application can understand it. And to be honest, now and then you'll get away with it and you'll wonder what all the fuss is about. But Web design is such a complex business, with so many little glitches that have to be put right; why add to the confusion? If you write to a forum for help with your site, you can easily cause a lot of people to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's going wrong until that time that you just happen to say 'Oh, and I pasted the text in straight from Word', and everyone smacks their forehead and goes 'Ahhhhh ...' as the lightbulb comes on. Pasting styled text from another application sounds like a real time-saver. But in the time it takes to sort out one of those 'tearing your hair out' problems, you can style the text in RapidWeaver ten times over.
If you're pasting something into RapidWeaver, hold down the Alt/Option key while you choose 'Paste' from the menu. Or just paste using Apple-Alt-V, which is the same thing. This ensures that you're pasting just the plain text, without the formatting. And bear this in mind: if you paste direct from Word without removing the styles, it will appear to work fine. None of that gobbledegook above will be visible but it can still do the damage.
Try to do it the same way that you indicate when you make a turn in a car—even if you're at a lonely crossroads at 3am and you can see for miles and there's nothing coming, you still indicate, right? Because it's ingrained in you, you don't even have to think to do it, it just happens. Muscle memory. Try to get like that with pasting text, and you'll save yourself a lot of time in the long run.
