Trick for Posting on Patch

Dear Patch users,

We have an easy fix for a couple of problems encountered by those who've begun entering posts on our new Patch platform. This applies to most posts – blogs, events, announcements, "Speak Out," etc. – except comments on articles. 

Here are the problems: 

1. All the text ends up in one big chunk with no paragraph breaks.
   
2. No option to add links.
   

Here's the workaround:

Go ahead and post the item. After it's posted, call it up on your screen, and you should see an "Edit" link at the top. Click it and go back into the post, where you can add paragraph breaks, links and other formatting, such as bold type or italics.

If you are copying and pasting from a word-processing document, it is recommended to do it from TextEdit or Notepad, not Word.

To add a link, you highlight the text or URL that you want to be linked, and then you click the little chain icon on the far right of the row of small icons at the top of the main text box. You'll get a window with a box where you can insert the URL to be linked to. (It's probably a good idea to delete the "http://" that automatically appears in the URL-entry box since the URL you insert will likely include it.)

We apologize for technical hiccups in the new platform, which is still going through its beta upgrade. 

We also welcome your feedback and suggestions on the new Patch. Just click the green "Feedback" button on the righthand edge of the screen.