2 Using the Visual Editor
This is the visual editor, where you can write and edit content in Pressbooks. The toolbar includes most of the same options as any other text editor like Word, Google Docs or Pages.
Headings
Using headings consistently and sequentially is important for your book’s structure and accessibility. Headings help readers identify the hierarchical structure of a document (e.g., sections, sub-sections). They provide a visual cue that helps sighted readers quickly navigate through sections of a document, skimming until they find the section they are looking for. Similarly, headings create logical divisions in the content and allow a non-sighted user to navigate a page or document easily using a screen reader.
Pressbooks gives you six heading options. Rather than using font size, bold text, or text color to structure your chapters, use these headings.
Style and Formatting
The Pressbooks toolbar has all the basic styling options of a normal text editor, you can make text bold, italic, underlined, change the text color, add indents,
- insert bulleted lists,
- list item 2
- list item 3
- numbered lists, and
block quotes.
Pressbooks also provides some more advanced style options including textboxes, tables, and footnotes.[1]
Examples
This is one of several textbox options, you can change the colors in the “appearance” menu.
- list item one
- list item 2
- list item 3
Tables
| This is a standard table in Pressbooks | Standard tables do not have grid lines | |
| You can add grid lines by clicking anywhere in the table, selecting the table menu in the visual editor > table properties > class |
Glossary Terms
Pressbooks has an option to add a glossary to your book. You can also add the full list of glossary terms and definitions to the book.
Saving and Previewing your Work
Pressbooks does not automatically save your work, so as you are adding or editing content in Pressbooks it’s important to regularly press the red save button.
Attribution:
The headings section was adapted from BC Campus Accessibility Toolkit which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Media Attributions
- Status and visibility menu
- footnotes look like this. ↵
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