Classy Amp

Filed under:
Web-design

Classy Amp is a Wordpress plugin which wraps ampersands in headings with <span class="amp"> </span>. Thanks to that, you can style your amps via CSS and improve the typography on your website. My friend Alan Lež (alanlez at gmail.com), an aspiring web programmer, is responsible for the programming. Thanks goes to Marko.

Download Classy Amp WP plugin here

How to Use

Copy the classy_amp.php file into your Plugins directory and activate it from your WP admin panel. Hopefully the plugin now inserts the <span> element aroung the amps in the headings and you’re ready to do your CSS magic.

If you’re using serif headings and web-safe fonts like Georgia, to style the ampersands, you can use the following CSS snippet:

span.amp {
font-family: "Goudy Old Style", Palatino, "Book Antiqua", Garamond, serif;
font-style: italic }

Another situation where Classy Amp can come in handy is when you’re setting your headings in Trebuchet MS. Replacing the Trebuchet ampersand with something less crappy is what I usually do.

The plugin should work on WP 1.5 and newer. We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions on making this plugin better. When time permits, we’ll be improving it and making it more user-friendly.

The plugin was inspired by Dan Cederholm, who showed the way of improving web typography with this method.