Most people compose text documents in Microsoft Word. Taking text from a Word document and publishing it on the web either pasted into a WYSIWYG editor or straight into an html file is not as easy as it looks. Following a few simple steps outlined below will save you time, frustration, and the embarrassment of spectacularly unusual text formatting.
If you are the content creator working in Word, the first, and most important rule is never, never, never use the "Save as Web Page" option in the "File" menu. If you do, it will create a file that looks like your original document, as long as you are using Word. What it really does is create an html file connected to a unique set of style rules and xml that will defeat any web page editor. In the code view, it looks like this:
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><b> </b></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><b>From
Portland
International Airport (PDX) or Interstate 84:</b></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><b>Approximately
90 minutes</b></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.5in;text-indent:-.25in'><span
style='font-size:11.0pt'>1.</span><span style='font-size:7.0pt'>
</span><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Take I-205 south to the I-5
northbound
interchange (24 miles). </span></p>
It should look like this, if it hadn't been written by sadists:
<p><b>From
Portland
International Airport (PDX) or Interstate 84:</b></p>
<p><b>Approximately
90 minutes</b></p>
<p>Take I-205 south to the I-5
northbound
interchange (24 miles). </p>
So don't do it. Instead, do this:
If you are receiving the document from another party, check which application opens the file. If it's Internet Explorer, you probably have Word html. This is especially dangerouse because you can select all the text in the browser, just like above, paste it into your editor and it will add all the horrible Word html in the background without you even knowing! If you find you are looking at your document with a web browser, save the file to your desktop, open Word, and perform steps 1 through 4.
A good idea is to check what you have once you have pasted your content and before you try to change it. FCKEdiotor is the embedded WYSIWYG editor used on most of the web administrative pages. To check this using this editor, click the "Source" button to see the code.
This will change the view so you can see the actual markup.
In this view, if you see "<p class=MsoNormal>" anywhere, you are done for. You'll never clean it by hand. Switch back to graphic mode by clicking on the "Source" button again. Select all the text. Delete it and start over from the source file.