Let's improve the writing -- and the message -- in the WordPress sample post.

[marybaum]

Here's the current copy in the WP sample post:

"This is an example of a WordPress post, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many posts as you like in order to share with your readers what is on your mind."

For starters, let's fix the opening sentence to make it correct English:

"This is an example of a WordPress post. You could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from.
... "

But we can also be a little more helpful. If someone needs to know what a post is, or what a page is, maybe they'd appreciate something more like this:

"This is an example of a WordPress post. Think of a post as an article in your own magazine, and write from your own perspective. Create as many posts as you like, or as it takes to make your case. "

Here's a dummy post I use with a client who might be a little more sophisticated:

`

<p>This is a sample intro paragraph we can use to hook visitors into reading the article. With Gutenberg – I mean the block editor – and some shrewd changes on the style sheet, we can make this blend in or stand out.</p> 
<p>
Up to now we’ve shown this dummy copy to be a whole lot longer than it’s likely ever going to be, even if we have a long story to tell, because we’ll want to break up that longer story into a series of posts.
</p> 
<h3>
Taking the measure.
</h3> 
<p>
Another thing we do for readability is to spec a maximum character width on the paragraph tag. There’s even a unit for that! It’s the ch. I set the <p> element to a maximum width of 55 to 75 characters.
</p> 
<p>
In traditional typography, the line length is called the measure. If you want to impress someone (from a very short list!) in a meeting, you can say, "I think a 75-character measure is fine, but 55 characters is a lot more comfortable for some people." You'll sound like you've been setting type for 40 years.
</p> 
<h3>
This is a sample subhead.
</h3> 
<p>
I tend to use subheads that stand out at smallish sizes: they’re bold, or script, or they might be highly decorative. Their purpose is to keep your reader interested in discovering the next little bit of copy--or to tell the next part of the story in a nutshell, or both. Designwise, if there’s a distinctive typeface in your logo, you’ll likely see it repeated in subheads, where they’ll help the content pull the reader’s eyes down farther into the copy.
</p> 
<p>
That’s the hope, anyway.</p> 

`
So there are lots of ways to fix this, from the sublime to the stupidly simple. Do we want to consider the easy grammatical fix as has-patch? Do we want to involve another team, like Marketing? If we add subheads and explain why they're a good idea, we'll patch the CSS accordingly.

So I guess this is a needs-patch if it gets blessed.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Hi @marybaum, welcome to WordPress Trac! Thanks for the ticket.

The grammatical fix seems easy enough to get in. However, there's also a similar ticket to rethink and update this default content: #34116. Maybe we could consolidate efforts there?

[SergeyBiryukov]

Marking the grammatical fix as a good-first-bug for 5.3. We can continue iterating on #34116 in a future release.

[roytanck]

@marybaum Are you still getting this with fresh installs of WP 5.2?

It appears that the default post content for new installs is currently 'Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!', with a variation for multisite installs where 'WordPress' is replaced with the site name. As far as I can tell this has been the default content at least since WP 4.2. Versions before 4.9 had 'blogging' instead of 'writing'.

A text search of WP core did not turn up the string mentioned in the ticket for me.

[earnjam]

@marybaum, do you have a theme or plugin that might be replacing the sample content?

The ​current Sample Post content is:

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

---

The ​current Sample Page content is:

This is an example page. It’s different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this:

Hi there! I’m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my website. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin’ caught in the rain.)

…or something like this:

The XYZ Doohickey Company was founded in 1971, and has been providing quality doohickeys to the public ever since. Located in Gotham City, XYZ employs over 2,000 people and does all kinds of awesome things for the Gotham community.

As a new WordPress user, you should go to your dashboard to delete this page and create new pages for your content. Have fun!

[SergeyBiryukov]

Indeed, this text is not a part of WordPress core. It appears to be sample content in themes based on Genesis Framework.