Title: inconsistent formatting Last modified: August 20, 2016 --- # inconsistent formatting * [edstevensdba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/edstevensdba/) * (@edstevensdba) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/) * Writing a new post, pretty straight forward. Have some lines formatted as header1, header2, header3. While in the visual editor, they render as expected, but when I select to ‘view post’, the ‘header3’ lines render much larger than the ‘header2’ lines — nothing like what they show in the visual editor, and nothing like the same-styled elements in all of my previously – and published – posts. Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total) * [WPyogi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wpyogi/) * (@wpyogi) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234551) * Try validating your page for coding errors — they can cause problems like that: * [http://codex.wordpress.org/Validating_a_Website](http://codex.wordpress.org/Validating_a_Website) * Thread Starter [edstevensdba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/edstevensdba/) * (@edstevensdba) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234566) * When I copied the entire content of the post from the ‘text’ window an fed it to the wc3 validator, it choked on the fact that the content of the ‘text’ window is not a complete html document … * First problems reported are: * Unable to Determine Parse Mode! No DOCTYPE found, and unknown root element. Aborting validation. No Character encoding declared at document level * So it’s use as a validator in this context appears to be pointless. (Several years ago I used that validator quite a bit when I was teaching myself about html and building a website hosted by my ISP.) * I would think that if I had injected some bad html – say some mis-matched begin/ end tags — the visual editor would have complained. Also, I’d expect that if it were bad html, I would see big chunks of the post going askew from the point of the error. Instead, everything is rendering correctly except items marked as h2 and h3. And their rendering is balanced, just not consistent with what is shown in the visual editor. It’s as if there is something amiss with the style sheet. And I don’t have any custom CSS’s.. * [WPyogi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wpyogi/) * (@wpyogi) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234567) * Is your site on localhost? If not, simply use the URL in the validator. Or you can try using Firebug to look at what’s happening on the page and why the formatting may be off. * If you post a link to your site, someone can likely give you better help. * [Andrew Nevins](https://wordpress.org/support/users/anevins/) * (@anevins) * WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234570) * > So it’s use as a validator in this context appears to be pointless. * No, if you don’t specify your markup language, the validator will figure it out with your code’s Doctype. If you don’t have and specify a Doctype, your code is definitely not valid and the validator expresses this. * The error, “No DOCTYPE found” is worth looking at. The first step when creating a website, the first line of code in each page should be a DOCTYPE definition. [http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_doctype.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_doctype.asp) * Thread Starter [edstevensdba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/edstevensdba/) * (@edstevensdba) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234580) * “The error, “No DOCTYPE found” is worth looking at. The first step when creating a website, the first line of code in each page should be a DOCTYPE definition.” * I know that, but it is the code WordPress generated …. I just figured that WordPress was taking that and wrapping it in the necessary doc headers/footers since it is not a complete html document in and of itself. * Thread Starter [edstevensdba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/edstevensdba/) * (@edstevensdba) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234581) * Wpyogi – I’m not sure what you mean by asking if my site is on localhost. I’m a database administrator and deal quite a bit with networking issues. To me, ‘ localhost’ is the standard reference to IP address 127.0.0.1 – the loopback address for all computers. So I really don’t understand that question in this context. * My site is edstevensdba.wordpress.com, but the post in question has not yet been published because of this very problem. I really don’t want to publish it until I can be sure it renders the way I want. * [WPyogi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/wpyogi/) * (@wpyogi) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234582) * The question arose because you said * > I copied the entire content of the post from the ‘text’ window an fed it to > the wc3 validator, * That suggested that your site might be only on your local computer — because that’s a way of validating for sites that are not accessible on the internet. * Copying only rendered HTML for a post won’t rule out all possible coding problems that may be affecting a post. More effective to use the URL of the page in the validator to validate the entire page — and that way you won’t get the missing DOCTYPE problem (assuming you have one — Andrew raised that question because sometimes people on self-hosted sites muck things up so badly that they have no DOCTYPE and that wreaks havoc with some browsers). * But now that you’ve posted the URL, this all becomes somewhat moot, as your site is on WordPress.COM. These forums are for self-hosted WordPress.ORG sites, so you’ll need to post on the WP.COM forums for help with this. I did look at your page, but did not see anything obviously wrong, so hopefully someone on .COM can shed some light on it. * Sorry for any confusion here on my end… * Thread Starter [edstevensdba](https://wordpress.org/support/users/edstevensdba/) * (@edstevensdba) * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234584) * ok, I’ll try to locate the .com forums. * Thanks. * Moderator [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * (@jdembowski) * Forum Moderator and Brute Squad * [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234586) * Try [http://en.forums.wordpress.com/](http://en.forums.wordpress.com/) that should get you the support for your WordPress.**COM** blog. Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total) The topic ‘inconsistent formatting’ is closed to new replies. * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/) * 9 replies * 4 participants * Last reply from: [Jan Dembowski](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jdembowski/) * Last activity: [13 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/inconsistent-formatting/#post-3234586) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics