I don't normally post to this blog on technical subjects but I notice that the layout of some recent articles has become a bit 'ragged'—higgeldy-piggeldy font styles and sizes, no picture borders and captions 'departed' from the pictures.
Firstly, I would mention that a Typepad blog uses a technique known as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which sets the layout (font style, font size, borders, etc) for the whole site.
These can be over-ridden when posting an article—for example, you could use bold and italic or change colour and alignment for particular selections of text.
The 'insert picture' function also has standard settings which may be over-ridden for individual pictures.
The 'messy layout' problem arises when, instead of using the Typepad 'compose screen', the author prepares the article using other software (such as Word) and then uses copy/paste to transfer it into the Typepad blog.
It is actually possible to post directly to the blog from the Office 2007 version of Word but the use of copy/paste introduces HTML code which conflicts with that defining the blog layout.
The correct way to use copy/paste is to save the original article as text which removes all of the HTML formatting (which can't be seen on the article though it is in the background)—then, open the document in a text editor (such as Notepad) and copy/paste from there.
The article will then adopt the standard site formatting, leaving you to insert pictures and make any required format changes.
Picture Captions
Correct alignment of captions to pictures involves the use of HTML tables which is best avoided unless you really know what you are doing.
I find it far easier to edit the original picture (using Photoshop, or whatever) so that the caption becomes part of the picture.
Both of these issues are mentioned in 'Posting Tips' which is one of this site's permanent pages.
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