Is there any way to align text to the center instead of the left?

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   Ben Blackwellposted 10 years ago

   I have a poem that would require this feature.  I can use periods to move everything, but I would rather not do that.
   
   Thanks
   Ben Blackwell

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      DzyMsLizzyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      The short answer is, "no."
      
      I have run into this problem myself numerous times, as I like to play with the spacing and alignment of my poems on the page.  Even in MS Word, it is not as easy to do as it used to be on an old-fashioned typewriter!
      
      I've made similar posts myself, and the prevailing "wisdom" is that quite simply, while poetry is allowed, Hub Pages is not primarily a poetry-writing site, and it does not cater to those needs.
      
      Sad, but that's the way things currently stand.
      
      The only other device you can use it the block quote tool, and that is not really satisfactory for most poems.
      
      I agree this would be a great feature to be able to have--to shift any text to left, right, center or justify, just as we can in a word processing program.

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         Ben Blackwellposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         It is very strange that we do not have it already.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll make a suggestion.

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         1. 85

            DzyMsLizzyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Yes, it is weird.  That's a fairly standard usage in writing various things.
            I used to do all sorts of stuff on my typewriter, that I can't do in Word or here, at least not without a LOT of trouble,  'drawing pictures', Like this:
                                                                    p                      s
                                                                        o               t
                                                                            c       e
                                                                                k
            
            It's extremely time-consuming...and doesn't always work within a Hub.  The formatting standard wants to ignore all the extra spaces, and slam everything to the left margin.

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      tsadjatkoposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Hey Ben - how about formatting your poem the way you want it  in a document and then screen print the document and save it as a .jpg or other image file - crop it to the size you want and upload it as an image into the hub page.

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      Shyron E Shenkoposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Ben,  I did my Poem, A Glimmer of Hope and typed it in a frame and took a picture of it and saved it as a jpg, then posted in my hub as a picture.
      
      This also gives you the ability to put ID markings in you poem incase it is stolen.

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   calculus-geometryposted 10 years ago

   There is actually a way to align the text anyway you want, without resorting to images, but it's kind of ugly.
   
   When you are editing a text capsule, look at the top of the menu bar where it says "Paragraph" in the drop-down menu.  Choose the option that says "Preformatted" and compose your poem  using as many spaces as necessary to center the lines where you want them.  When you save the capsule, the spaces will be preserved.  The drawback is that the font is an ugly monospace one.   
   
   It's better than using images because Google bots can't crawl text presented that way. 
   
   I can't find any examples of live hubs that make use of the preformatted text feature, but you can play around with it in an unpublished hub to see how it works.
   
   Edit: found a great example
   http://edweirdo.hubpages.com/hub/How-To … t-Capsules

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      DzyMsLizzyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      It seems to me that I tried this once or twice, and the supposedly "allowed" tags were promptly identified as "invalid" and removed by the HTML "cleanup" tool, so it was all for naught.

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         calculus-geometryposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Edweirdo's sample of preformatted text using the pre tags still has the extra spaces intact.  I tried it in the hub editor on one of mine and the changes held, but I didn't publish it because as mentioned, it looks pretty ugly. Did you go into the html?  I didn't, I just used the editor.

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            DzyMsLizzyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            I tried it both ways--the "pre" tag was one that got removed by the html 'cleanup' tool.  It did not work.

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   ardhendudeyposted 10 years ago

   I think it will be wrong for HP. Because, according to guidelines in HP we have to align text in left side before post anything in HP, elsewhere HP will not approve your text.

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   Claire Roachposted 10 years ago

   Yes do make it a suggestion, I will also.  I would like some headers centered when I do a right aligned text box, as I like them as "tips" and feel this would be better centered instead of having to write *********tips*********

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   Anna Marie Bowmanposted 10 years ago

   If I were to make a suggestion regarding this, I would suggest creating a Hub format (kind of like they do for recipes, and that sort of thing) for poetry, that will allow you to center the text.

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