Our approach to formatting text
29th July 2025
posted 29th July 2025
Many website builders let you use rich text editors to style your content with different fonts, sizes, and bold or italic text. At first, this seems great because it feels like you have full control over how your text looks. But in reality, rich text editors can cause problems with consistency, layout, and focus.
In this blog, we’ll explain why we avoid rich text editors at Webfactory and how our simpler approach helps you create clear, consistent, and easy-to-manage content.
Why we don’t use a rich text editor
There are several key problems with rich text editing on the web:
Inconsistent results: Just because you set a font doesn’t mean your visitors will see it. If a font isn’t installed on a user’s device, their browser will fall back to a default system font, changing the appearance dramatically. What looks right to you might look completely different to someone else.
Poor handling of complex content: Things like tables or embedded content often don’t carry over well. Even when they do work, the layout is usually altered and may not be mobile-friendly or visually consistent.
Design distraction: Having access to styling tools can distract you from what really matters, your content. Writers often waste time adjusting how something looks instead of focusing on clarity, structure and message.
The Webfactory way
We’ve taken a different approach at Webfactory, one that’s focused on simplicity, consistency and clarity.
Instead of using a traditional rich text editor, we provide a lightweight formatting toolbar and a set of simple shortcuts. For example:
Use *asterisks* to make text bold
Use _underscores_ for italics
Add > before a line to make it a list
The editor itself displays your content in a plain, neutral font. This might seem limiting at first, but it’s actually quite powerful.
Why this works better
You focus on content, not design: By removing visual design decisions from the writing process, you’re free to concentrate on what matters: writing great content.
Everything stays consistent: No more wondering which font, size or style to use. Every heading, paragraph, and list will appear the same throughout your site. This is not only visually cleaner, but also improves how Google understands your content (semantics matter for SEO).
Easy global changes: Need to change your site’s font? You can do that in one place, and it will automatically update everywhere. No hunting through pages to fix inconsistencies.
A better balance
We understand that rich text editors can feel familiar or even essential to some users. But in practice, removing design tools from the writing process brings more benefits than drawbacks:
- Less complexity
- Better structure
- Improved accessibility
- Cleaner mobile presentation
- Easier maintenance in the long term
At Webfactory, we favour clarity and consistency over clutter and confusion. Our formatting system keeps things clean, efficient, and focused, so your message stands out every time.
Summary
In short, while rich text editors may seem helpful, they often create more problems than they solve. At Webfactory, we choose a simpler way to help you focus on writing clear and consistent content without worrying about design distractions. This approach makes your website easier to manage, looks better on all devices, and helps your message reach more people. Keeping things simple means your content can shine every time.