Composing Your Posts Offline and Quick Formatting with Markdown

Most subscribers are familiar with TypePad's built-in rich text editor as a way of posting to their weblogs, but it's not the only way to compose posts. Here are a few other methods of adding punch to your text.

If you prefer to compose your posts offline, or are looking for a different environment for composing posts, you might want to try out a desktop client. Desktop clients offer an alternate way to compose your posts. Some clients are free, like Windows Live Writer (great for PC users who love the functionality of Word, but hate the formatting that copying and pasting causes). Others, like Ecto, include support for Markdown, which is discussed below, and are available for both PCs and Macs.

And in case you missed our recent post, if you've already upgraded to Office 2007, you can even post to your TypePad weblog right from Microsoft Word.

Or maybe you want to compose your posts in TypePad but are looking for an easy way to add formatting. Though you may not be familiar with Markdown yet, it's a recent addition to TypePad that you just might love. Markdown is a formatting option that transforms your readable, plain text posts into error free HTML - without you needing to use code or click buttons. Since Markdown uses syntax that makes sense in either Plain Text or Rich Text format, it's easy to learn, and easier to use.

To get an idea of how easy and time saving Markdown can be, compare typing out:

***bold and italics***

Versus:

bold and italics

If you'd like to try using Markdown in your posts, we have more information in our Markdown Knowledge Base article. The syntax used for Markdown can be found here.