How to Remove Empty Paragraph Tags from Shortcodes in WordPress

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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Thomas Griffin

Hello! I'm Thomas, and I've been in WordPress for 10+ years. I've contributed to core and created the TGM Plugin Activation class. My WordPress plugins are active on over 19,000,000 websites and include popular ones like OptinMonster, WPForms and MonsterInsights.

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