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Writing

Copy and paste

What happens to formatting when text comes in from elsewhere or goes out, and the two ways to copy a document as code.

Pasting

Text pasted from another app keeps the formatting Calmly Writer understands: headings, bold and italic, lists, links, tables. Text from a web page is cleaned of its styles, and text from Word of the markup Word adds. Pasted images are embedded in the document; see Images.

Pasting plain text follows a simple rule: an empty line between two blocks of text starts a new paragraph, and a single line break stays a line break inside the paragraph.

Pasted Markdown is not converted. If you paste **bold**, you get the asterisks, as you would in any other text field.

To paste as plain text, without any formatting, use Ctrl+Shift+V⌥⇧⌘V or the right-click menu, Paste without format (on a Mac, Paste and Match Style).

Copying as code

The right-click menu has two entries for taking a document somewhere that wants its source rather than its look: Copy HTML and Copy Markdown. With text selected they copy the selection; with nothing selected they become Copy HTML of the entire document and Copy Markdown of the entire document. Paste the result into a blog editor, a wiki or a message, and the formatting comes out as markup.

On a touch screen, both are under ⋮ in the format bar.

Select some words, paste a web address, and the words become a link to it.

More in Writing

Formatting as you type

The Markdown shortcuts that turn into headings, lists and emphasis while you type, and the ones you can turn off.

The toolbar and the shortcuts reminder

The small toolbar that appears over selected text, and the reminder of shortcuts that shows when you hold Ctrl or Cmd.

Headings and the table of contents

Six levels of heading, the panel that lists them, and the keys that move through it without touching the mouse.

Lists and checklists

Bulleted, numbered and checklist items, nesting them with Tab, and turning one kind of list into another.

Links

Links to web pages, to other documents on your disk and to headings in the same document, and how to follow them.

Images

Four ways to put a picture in a document, the difference between embedding and linking one, and what the editor does not do with images.

Tables, code and quotes

The slash menu that inserts blocks, the toolbar that edits tables, and the rules that keep them compatible with Markdown.

Comments

Notes attached to a passage, in three colours, which travel with the document and never print.

Smart punctuation

Curly quotes, dashes, ellipses and arrows written for you as you type, the quotation marks of your language, and how to turn each one off.

Spelling and languages

The spell checker and its languages on each system, adding words to the dictionary, and the language of the app itself.

Writing direction

Right-to-left writing for Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and other scripts, per document or for every new document.

Find and replace

Searching the document or every open tab, and a replace that keeps the capitals of what it finds.