How to apply a class to a portion of text in a paragraph block?

There’s no direct way to apply a custom class to a portion of text within a paragraph block without tweaking the HTML. The ‘highlight‘ feature you mentioned is close, but it doesn’t let you specify a custom class.

To add a custom class, you need to edit the HTML and manually add a custom class. If want to try it, here how you can do it.

In your paragraph, select the words or phrase you want to apply the class to. Next, click on the three dots in the block toolbar (it’s called the ‘More options‘ menu) and choose ‘Edit as HTML‘.

Now, in the HTML view, you’ll see your text. Wrap the words you want to style with a <span> tag and add your class. Something like this: This is your example <span class="your-custom-class">paragraph</span> in to highlight. Replace your-custom-class with whatever class name you’ve defined in your CSS.

And that’s it! The words you wrapped in the span tag will now have your custom class applied. You can then style this class however you like in your theme’s CSS file.