The WordPress block editor is a pain in the ass because the default block is set to paragraph. This is why I see some posts in a run-on, block writing format. You need to paste in plain text to preserve your paragraph formatting, because if you click PASTE, the input is treated as HTML and isn’t translated correctly.
If you are posting poetry, select /Verse and paste as plain text.
This is a reminder, because many of the run-on posts I see in the Reader are not intentionally written without punctuation, which leads me to believe that the omission of paragraphs wasn’t intended. This is what I mean when I mention block writing. Block writing is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. It is a run-on block of writing without punctuation.
If you are using the block editor to compose, try using the /Classic selection for a block, which allows you to use a hard enter to separate paragraphs. I used /Classic for this post.
I am not an expert by any means. I am still trying to figure out how to post a haiku photo without having the text chewed off by the WordPress Reader. I posted one that was readable but not acceptable aesthetically. I am speaking strictly of the behavior of the WordPress Reader, because some bloggers have figured out how to make clean posts that are easy to scroll in the reader, which is convenient because I would rather read a post in the reader than drill down to a blogsite.
I cannot seem to get the Reader to respond the way I want it to, and have spent an eternity with Gemini and ChatGPT asking about it and then testing and testing and testing. So all of my posts show an excerpt in the Reader to make things easier for me.
This is to address the post that shows the entire post in the Reader instead of an excerpt that forces readers to click a link to the blog to read the full post. If the whole post is shown in the Reader, I sometimes see run-on paragraphs, as if the entire post were inserted in the excerpt box as well. I am not an expert. I only mean to help, as a reader, identify something that might help one or two people. Maybe they aren’t aware they are doing something. I don’t know.
As I mentioned before, I realize that some people have their valid reasons for wanting to post in a run-on style. The fact that you lose potential readers is irrelevant. I am addressing those who may be a little like me in the past, impatient with the clunky WordPress editor. You are asking the reader (in WordPress Reader and not your blog site) to sacrifice scrolling time. Not many readers like dead still time on their screen. They have to be scrolling to keep their attention.
Which means white space. If the Reader shows 250 words strung together as though they were put in the excerpt box, most people aren’t going to read that post. It may be the theme, the browser, or the way the reader’s browser displays what you post. It isn’t my intention to talk about things I don’t understand. I simply noticed a pattern. Of about 100 posts in Chrome that I read in the WordPress Reader, maybe 10 are run-on paragraphs. And I have clicked on a run-on post and then later clicked on it, and the Reader shows it correctly.
So, I am not sure what is to be done. The point is that the Reader needs to be technologically updated for viewing, giving the blogger an idiot-proof ability to control what a reader sees in the Reader.
Again, I am just a reader who wants to help by reporting my viewing experience. The experience of the average viewer. I don’t know why the Reader acts the way it does. I shouldn’t have to know either. I just want to listen to the music. I don’t want to study it.
Take Care.