Fixing The Normal/Paragraph Setting Issue That Plagued Me

 

Everyone following me knows how this has plagued me but I'll give a quick re-cap of exactly what the issue was before I say how I resolved it, at least as a temporary fix until Blogger sort it. Now when you look up above, you will see the setting is on PARAGRAPH, with a drop down menu. Paragraph will automatically insert a double spacing for you, which is fine when doing a blog post as it gives you natural paragraphs. It isn't always what I want though. 

Let me use the example of a book review. I put up the photo then paste the Goodreads blurb under it for everyone to see. Then I change the text colour and write 'My Review' in black, to let people know I am now starting my comments. I DO NOT leave a gap between that heading and the following text. Don't ask me why but I like it to look this way...

My Review:
Paddington gets himself into a few pickles this time. He is selected to be an usher at Harold's wedding but nobody explains what it means so he is giving out hard stares to anyone in the congregation, thinking he has to 'ush them!

Rather than this way...

My Review:

Paddington gets himself into a few pickles this time. He is selected to be an usher at Harold's wedding but nobody explains what it means so he is giving out hard stares to anyone in the congregation, thinking he has to 'ush them!

My issue is that when I press and try to select normal from the drop down menu, an option which eliminates the gap between heading and text, it refuses to change. I can battle it for ages to get it to relent as I did yesterday, but today it just refused to change at all so I had a rant on Twitter about it. I've tried deleting to remove the gap but it just puts the text up beside My Review. I tried messing about with the code but that was a failure too. Nothing worked. I was thinking that the only solution was to write or alter the post elsewhere then move the post to final position on the blog. But where? I struggle using these office documents where you set tabs and margins and all that caper. And then I remembered my Goodreads Group. Could I move the text there, alter it and bring it back fixed?

YES I COULD! I copied the unfixed text with gaps and chose a random comment box under a post I had already written. Instead of publishing it, I quickly removed the offending gaps so that the post text looked the way I wanted it. I copied it then pasted the corrected part into the post where I wanted it back on the blog and BINGO! Problem solved! After that I just deleted the text from the comment box on Goodreads and went back to the blog to publish the completed post. Now I can actually just go to my Group, construct the whole text there and then put it straight onto the blog post without battling the stupid paragraph setting. I can use paragraph to put the gap in between my copy of the blurb and where my text needs to start and then just put my corrected text in there, preview and publish. 

OK so what do you do if you don't have a Goodreads group set up to use? Go to your Goodreads profile page and scroll down to your wall, y'know, where friends can leave comments for you? Construct your post (or alter it to sort out the mistakes using the method I mention above), in the blank comments box, then instead of posting the finished text, copy and paste it to your blog, and just delete the now unneeded text in the comment box. 

OK it doesn't fix the Blogger issue but until they do fix it, it gives a hassle free solution to get round it. It might help me speed up things on the blog and get back to normal, whatever normal is these days. It is at least a kind of fix for right now.

*Wipes brow in relief*