Basic Writing Blocks – Text, Headings, Quotes, Lists

Now it’s time to talk about the basic writing blocks. We’ve already touched upon them in the Writing and Editing Basics lesson, but let’s learn more about them before we jump into more advanced block types.

Text

By now you should be pretty familiar with text blocks. Text, or paragraph blocks, are just normal text that can be formatted in a bunch of ways, but is always of the same size.

Each paragraph in Notion is its own separate block. Whenever you press Return, you’ll exit the current block and start typing in a new block. If, for whatever reason, you’d like to keep typing in the same paragraph, use Shift + Return, and that will give you another line within the same block, thus in the same paragraph. There are no length limits to paragraph blocks, so you can have a single text block be as long as you’d like. Using the shortcuts we learned in our previous module, you now know how to format either some text from a text block, or format the entire text block however you’d like.

[GIF showing Text block behavior]

Headings

Now, let’s talk about heading blocks. Headings are pretty straightforward and are three different heading sizes, 1-3. Headings can also be formatted, but they cannot be bolded, since the text is already bold and larger in size than a normal text block. Headings are great for dividing your page thematically, and we encourage to use them more often in Notion than you normally would in a Word document. Notion creates a Table of Contents for every single page, and that table of contents is based on your headings. While you may not want to use Heading 1 too often, feel free to use Headings 2 and 3 whenever it makes sense to start a new section, as that will then allow you to easily navigate to that section using the Table of Contents.

Headings also technically don’t have a character limit, but we do recommend to keep them short, as in a few words maximum.

Quotes

Quotes are an often underutilized block in Notion, and they’re great for highlighting important sentences, or bits of text and also, of course, adding quotes.

You can format a quote block just like a regular text paragraph block. The only difference in a quote block is that it has a vertical line to the left of it, and it has a little bit more margins around it, putting some emphasis to the text within it. There’s not much more to say about quote blocks, but we’ll talk about best practices for formatting your text within Notion later.

Lists

Now, let’s talk about lists, another very important basic text block. There are three list types in the Notion: Numbered, Bulleted, and To-Do.

In a list, every single entry is its own separate block. However, when you create a list, either by using the Slash menu, or a different keyboard shortcut, new blocks will be created as part of that list. To exit the list editing experience, simply press backspace on an empty list entry, and this will return you to a normal text block. This box can have text formatting, just like a regular text block.

You can use Tab to indent your list items, and Shift + Tab to remove the indent. There are unlimited levels of indenting, but of course it’s best not to use too many.

You can also use drag and drop to rearrange your list items, in a similar manner to rearranging pages on your sidebar.

Bullet lists

You can simply type - or + to start creating a Bulleted list. Your top level Bullet list items will be preceded by a little dark dot. As you start indenting your list, the symbols might change, either to a light dot or a square icon, signifying the indent level.

Bullet lists are great for listing out items without giving them specific weight based on their order.

[GIF Bullet list]

Numbered lists

Number lists are also pretty straightforward. You can just start typing 1 followed by a . and then a space and that will create a numbered list for you. If you prefer letters, you can also start typing “a.“.

As you keep indenting your numbered list, Notion will use either numbers or letters to signify the indent level. And as you indent many levels, these symbols might be reused a few levels down. What’s great about numbered lists in Notion is that, because you can rearrange them by drag and drop, the order will automatically update as you rearrange your list.

[GIF numbered list]

To-do lists

The final type of list block in Notion is a To-Do list. These lists are great for creating simple checklists and tasks that don’t need any additional context. For advanced task management, we usually use Notion databases, which we’ll talk about later in this course. But, for anything simple that just needs to be checked off, like a simple paper checklist, it’s best to use to-do lists.

Whenever an item is checked off the to-do list, it will appear as strikethrough text, and its color will be slightly muted. You can spawn a To-Do list by typing /todo anywhere on a Notion page. As you indent your to-do list, the checkbox items will not change in shape or size, but you can still indent a To-do list as many times as you’d like. Checking off a parent item in an indented to-do list will not check off any list items indented below.

[Gif To-Do list]

This is all we need to know, for now, about basic writing blocks. Hopefully, by now you are very proficient with the basics of writing in Notion.