1.1.5 Using the text editor

The text editor has many icons that might be used to make the text you want to enter clearer and easy to read or use. Plain text without any editing may be understandable for other users but it is not the best way if you want to make the content attractive to read, organised and easy to follow.

Probably most of us have been using the most popular buttons e.g. bold, italic, font size and family or numbered/bulleted list. These tools help us to stress things that are important according to us or make our text more organised and easy to read. The text editor has more icons that help us achieve this goal: hyperlinks, insert/edit image/media/table, insert special character etc.

The text editor can look different. It depends on Moodle version, installed plugins and site administration settings but basic icons are usually the same. If there is no icon you want to use, you can always choose Edit HTML source button  and edit your text manually. 

The text editor is available for you every time you want to enter some text e.g. posting on forum, editing section headings, writing an answer to a quiz question or editing the content of many blocks. 

The default text editor in Moodle is called Atto HTML editor and it was built specifically for Moodle. There are also other editors you can use: the TinyMCE editor and a plain text editor that can be choosen.