The Secret to Bold Quotation Marks
There is a time to use Quotation Marks, and a time not to use them. The Huffington Post has a list of ten examples of how not to use them (with pictures), and there are a number of blogs devoted just to photos of quotation mark mistakes. Clearly a lot of people who craft signs are on the do not have a clue list. (Of course, I am on that list sometimes too, but usually by choice, not ignorance. Usually…)
There is also a time when the quotation mark should be more than a discreet pair of little lines on a page.
Go big or go home.
- Unknown -
Now, those are quotation marks. Pay attention to this – these are important words kind of quotation marks. When you see these quotation marks in my blog, you are being given the message that if you read nothing else on this page, you should read whatever happens to be residing nearest to this pair of attention grabbers.
Some WordPress.com blog themes put those big quotation marks into your blog if you mark the words with the blockquote tool. My theme didn’t. I had purchased the WordPress CSS Upgrade though, so I knew I could eventually figure out how to make this happen. I’ll save you some time by explaining how to do it.
1 – Buy the WordPress.com CSS Upgrade. It costs $30 per year per blog, and it gives you many options for fonts and colours, even if you never touch the CSS Stylesheet Editor. (I don’t really understand why bloggers think they should get to have all the bells and whistles on their blog, and not pay anything at all for it.)
2 – Download, or create your quotation marks in the size you want them to appear on your page, then upload them to your WordPress Media Library. Note what the URL is for that image. (My quotation marks are a GIF image that is 1.46 KB in size and is 55 by 53 pixels in size.)
3 – Go to your Dashboard and click on Appearance – Custom Design – CSS. If you are using the Forever Theme, you will add the following to the CSS Stylesheet Editor. (If you are using any other theme, this code may or may not work):
blockquote {
background-image(‘insert your quotation mark URL here’);
background-position:top left;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
padding:.7em 2.2em .2em 2em;
color:#121212;
}
4 – Insert your image URL where it says insert your quotation mark URL here. Your image URL must be inside one set of single quotation marks.
The setting for padding will determine where the image sits on your page, so you will have to tweak that.
The setting for color will determine the color of the font, so you will have to tweak that too.
There, that is it. Or it might not be it, in which case you should contact the WordPress Happiness Engineers or the WordPress Forum and ask for help. I’m just a novice at this stuff!
_________________
Another Punctuation Mark Story: My Overworked Exclamation Mark!
The Exclamation Mark you made was fabulous! Thank you for the 1,2,3 step! And, thanks for sharing the code!
You are welcome. I’m not sure if it will work with all themes, but is worth a try.
You amaze me, Margie, at how tech savvy you are or are becoming. I was overwhelmed just by your directions and had to go lie down and take a little nap. I don’t think I’m ready for that upgrade yet, though I’ve thought of purchasing the video upgrade so I can put videos in my posts.
Thanks Susan. I am, at heart, a person who likes to figure out how things work, then see what else I can do with them. My blog isn’t just a place to put photos and words, but a place to play with the technology of blogging.
WordPress introduced a new feature a few days ago – extensive control of the colours on blogs. If you have the CSS upgrade, you can change background, title and link colours with a simple drag and drop interface. I think that WordPress is trying to make the CSS upgrade easy to use for those who don’t have the time or interest to figure out the CSS stylesheet.
I’m with Susan. My head is already hurting. I’ll have to look into this when I have extra Advil.
Sorry for causing headaches. Just put the Advil on my tab.
Thank you for sharing the secret code; now I don’t need to hunt for my secret decoder ring.
There are some other things I would like to figure out, so maybe I could borrow your secret decoder ring for a while.
I can’t believe how I am under using my quotaion marks and other punctuations. I am just plain lazy.
Well! Yes, you are!
You have clearly “crossed over.” You certainly know your “tech stuff.” You’re going to be my “go to” person from now on… : )
I really know nothing compared to people who know something, but at least I know what I don’t know. Sometimes.
Does the $30 upgrade make it easier? All one has to do is switch the editor tab from Visual to HTML and do any coding required. That’s what I do.
The CSS upgrade let’s you change the appearance of your entire blog, while the HTML editor lets you change the appearance of the words within individual posts or widgets. For example, with the CSS upgrade I can put the big quotation marks in front of quotations and that change will affect every quotation in my blog that has been tagged with the blockquote. Or I could adjust the header size, change the color of the menus or make every link red if it was blue. CSS requires some effort to figure out, but WordPress is gradually adding more and more features so that the upgrade becomes user friendly.
Jeez, Margie, your techno-computerese-knowing-stuff is almost scary. I’m impressed. Clueless, but impressed.
If you think that is scary, you should get a load of my hair do when I first get out of bed. One of my grand children once remarked, “Grandma, you have scary hair.”
Yep, I started reading, and thought only you could figure this out; therefore I decided to never use quotation marks, thus saving myself from a fiery technical faux-pas. You’re an amazing woman, Margie.
You are very kind, but this type of knowledge is really an indication that I need to get out more…
Who’d have ever thought there could be so much complexity behind simple quotation marks.
Computers and the internet don’t really make life any simpler!