How to Reference a Specific Paragraph or Sentence in WordPress Posts

Recently, we showed you a simple way to add footnotes in WordPress posts. After sharing that article, one of our users asked, if there was a way to reference to a specific paragraph or sentence in WordPress posts? This sounds like an amazing feature for journalists using WordPress. Surprisingly enough, we found the answer in an open-source emphasis script by the New York Times. Normally it would take some time for you to implement the script on your own site, but thanks to Ben Balter (@BenBalter), it will be a matter of few clicks. In this article, we will show you how to highlight and reference a specific paragraph or sentence in your WordPress posts.

First thing you need to is install and activate the plugin called WP Emphasis. This plugin is simple plug and play. There are no settings that you have to configure. To highlight or link to a specific paragraph or sentence, simply view your post in a browser.

Tap the Shift Key Twice (Double-Tap Shift Key Mode). The paragraph symbol ¶ will appear next to each paragraph.

If you bring your mouse over to these little icons, you will notice that these are hyperlinks. Simply click on any of the paragraph icon, and you will see the URL will update in the browser. Copy it and paste it wherever you like.

Now if you want to link to specific sentence(s), you can easily do that as well. All you have to do is while you are in the double-tap shift key mode, simply click on any sentence. It will automatically highlight, and the url will update as well. You can also select a group of sentences by simply clicking multiple sentences. Here is an example of how it would look when you link to it:

This double-tap shift key mode makes it really easy because all the formatting, syntax is figured out for you. If you want to see how the syntax and those little characters are generated at the end of your URL, you can look at the NY Times Emphasis Script Page.

Or if you just want things to work, install and activate WP Emphasis plugin.