Help:Advanced text formatting

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WP:TYPESET

This essay, Wikipedia:Advanced text formatting or Advanced typesetting, describes many techniques to control (or adjust) the alignment of text on a page.

Moving vanity-boxes lower in articles

Perhaps the single greatest improvement to many articles is to lower those grandstanding top tag-boxes that proclaim, "This article is defective: fix immeditately". Most of those tag-box templates allow a parameter "|section" when lowering the tag-box further down the page. For example: {{RefImprove|section|May 2009}}. Moving a distracting tag-box can vastly improve the readability for readers, otherwise alarmed and distracted by a 2-year-old gripe box someone threw on the page, unopposed, years ago.

Setting small font-size of lesser text

Lesser text can be reduced by a smaller font size, such as using a span-tag:

<span style="font-size:87%">German: Der Lange-Annoying-Name-der-Dinge</span>

That font-size will shrink the text somewhat: German: Der Lange-Annoying-Name-der-Dinge. A highly irritating problem can be the placement of too much foreign (or off-topic text) in the intro section. Much tangent-level wording should be moved to lower sections. However, the use of a reduced font-size can help minimize the glaring impact of off-topic text. Sizes such as 95% or 92% retain the original font shape; however, sizes of 87% or 82% might be needed.

Reducing line-height when wrapping small text

A very common problem, when using a smaller font, is the gapping caused by large interline spacing between the lines. A better line-height (for small-font notes) is: 1.3em, such as by:

Such small lines could be used in a lengthy image caption, where the typical caption size would take too much space, for the amount of detailed caption being displayed. Of course, once again, a full solution often involves removing some excess text (from the image-caption) to a lower spot on the page, and then referring to the image, such as "(see image at right)" from that text.

The colon-indent prefix ":" which indents lines (by about 7 spaces) also triggers a smaller line-height, so any indented, wrapped text will appear closer to the upper-text on the indented line.

[ This is a draft to be expanded, later... ]