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. 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

Hey friend! 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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