Text Wrapping – to Use or Not to Use

— Written By Jeff Ware
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digital devicesWe’ve had a lot of questions over the past few years about formatting when it comes to using text wrap around images in your content.

Our recommendation has always been to not use this function if you want your content to look standard across all platforms (i.e., desktop/tablet/mobile). Always center your images between paragraphs or blocks of content.

Here’s why.

There are simply too many variations of devices (and subsequent screen sizes) to accommodate fully. Throw into the mix the fact that some users may be viewing your page/post in landscape mode or using an assistive “zoom” function for visual impairment and you can see how trying to achieve the “perfect wrap” becomes almost impossible.

If you look at most major websites, i.e., NY Times, Washington Post, BBC, Medium, etc., you’ll not see floating images or text wrapping anymore. It’s a relic of the “old” web and one that will soon be phased out all together thanks to more responsive design and functionality.

So why do we still have it as an option in the Editor?

Although we do use a customized version of WordPress for our Extension ecosystem, we want to make sure you have as many options as possible for your content that fit within the NC State University web guidelines. But we also want to make sure you understand that certain options do not carry well across platforms and/or devices.

If you want to be conscious about creating content that is usable across multiple devices, text wrapping may not be the way to go for what you are trying to achieve.

The same can be said about the use of PDFs. While PDFs do have their uses (great for downloading and printing), they are not great for accessing and viewing on mobile. This is why we also always recommend that when you do make a page or post that includes a PDF, you also include all the relevant content (the who/what/when/where) as text on the page to be easily accessible to everyone.

If you have any questions about the use of text wrap or anything else related to your Extension content, let me know at jmware2@ncsu.edu.