If you regularly write blog articles, website content, or email marketing copy, this copy-paste tip is for you. Many content writers develop their drafts in Word, Pages, or a Google Doc and then copy and paste the final, approved version into the website or email.
That multi-step process allows for sharing drafts and prevents accidentally publishing content before it’s ready. It also lets writers use grammar and spell-checking tools.
The downside is that copying from one source and then pasting directly into your website or email marketing tool runs the risk of including formatting and behind-the-scenes code from the original system. This is particularly troublesome when pasting from Word, creating odd spacing, font format and size issues, and time spent fixing incorrect formatting.
More challenging is that the code that gets pasted behind the scenes can cause emails to look fine in Gmail but incorrectly in Outlook.
Our tip – once you’re finished editing, copy and paste the content into a text editor or notepad tool. That generally will remove formatting and hidden code, and you can then copy the unformatted content from the text editor and paste it into your final system. Yes, you’ll need to replace any bullets, bold or italic formatting, and perhaps change the font and font size, but it’s much faster and has less risk.
Note, if your web or email marketing software has a “paste as text” option, that will remove the formatting and save you the extra step explained above. However, since we work in multiple systems daily, we find it better to have a consistent process to ensure every final paste is free of unnecessary issues.
This tip can seem counterintuitive since it adds steps to a process, but it will likely improve efficiency overall.
