Sometimes when you add WordPress shortcodes in your content, empty paragraph tags are added too!
That’s frustrating. You need to remove those empty p tags to prevent your content from being distorted. I had it happen enough that I decided to do something about it. I created a quick code snippet to remove those empty paragraph tags from shortcodes on my own WordPress site, and I thought it would be nice to share it with you as well!
Simply drop the following code in your theme’s functions.php file:
/**
* Removes empty paragraph tags from shortcodes in WordPress.
*/
function tg_remove_empty_paragraph_tags_from_shortcodes_wordpress( $content ) {
$toFix = array(
'<p>[' => '[',
']</p>' => ']',
']<br />' => ']'
);
return strtr( $content, $toFix );
}
add_filter( 'the_content', 'tg_remove_empty_paragraph_tags_from_shortcodes_wordpress' );
That’s it! All empty paragraph tags have been removed from your shortcodes.
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This worked for me! Thanks for posting this trick!
You bet, Matt! Glad it removed those empty paragraph tags for you. 🤩
Thank you, this has been in my to do list for too long!
It works!
One question: why the “” in the code?
*** Amend ***
One question: why the — br — in the code?
Hey Daniel – it’s there because sometimes line breaks can also cause extra space to be added which “feel” like the space added by empty paragraph tags, so I chose to remove them as well.
Hi Thomas,
Am I right by saying this doesn’t work anymore?
Hey Klaas – no, this does in fact still work and achieves the result you would be looking for. 🙂