The WordPress visual editor is one of two options on the edit screen. The Visual Editor allows rich text posts, while the plain Text editor allows only text. The visual editor is considered a WYSIWG or What You See Is What You Get editor. This means that whatever you see in the content editor is what visitors to your WordPress site will see. Everything is published exactly as it appears to you. This is similar to programs such as Microsoft Word and other word-processing and editing programs.
The visual editor in WordPress is a version of the open source TinyMCE editor. This HTML editor is very similar to Word and includes many features that you may already be familiar with, such as buttons to add bold, italics, or underlining to your text. This makes it much easier for users to format text because no HTML coding is required. All you have to do is click the button and the text is automatically formatted like you want.
Another benefit to a visual editor is that images can be added directly into the text in the editor itself. You see how the image will appear on the page, including its alignment and size. This makes it much easier to align your text with the image.
WordPress developers can also extend TinyMCE with their own customized buttons and other changes as needed.
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