It came to me one Saturday morning while reading, as good ideas often do. I wonder if you can ask a fill-in-the-blank question in an online form.
Online form builders pride themselves on dozens of question types, but in Actually, fill-in-the-blank questions are not that commonly supported. Most forms display the questions one after the other, with a title followed by a text box or dropdown menu for respondents to enter their answers.
I wanted a form where you could ask ” How do you __ in [Application]?”, where you can fill in the blank with text and choose an application from a drop-down list. The best thing you could do in most forms applications, for example Google Forms, is to split the question into two sections.
Instead, I wanted something more like this, which is possible and much easier than it seemed at first glance.
This is how I built my form in JotForm, along with a handful of other apps that also qualify.
Just open JotForm and create a free account if you don’t already have one. I have one. That will get you up to 100 responses to your form each month for free, perfect for getting started.
From the left sidebar, select the Fill in the Blank option. . You can then use the formatting tools to customize your question, add an image, alter the page alignment, or change the font type and size.
To create the dropdown, click add field and scroll down to find Dropdown. From there, you can easily customize the options you want to pre-populate.
In addition, words, phrases and short terms can be used to complete the questions, but you can also be more specific by adding a series of form elements in the Fill in the blank field .
For example, you might want to ask for a respondent’s personal data, such as name, address, or phone number. Or, you might want to request someone’s signature, which will look like this:
In a question, for example, I wanted my respondents to have the option to select an answer from several options, so I added on multiple choice option:
But you can also let respondents choose from a single option selection, add numbers, dates, or fill in blank text boxes with full paragraphs.
The opportunities are endless, so get creative!
How to use your answers to fill in the blanks
Now It’s time to put your form results to work. Fortunately, whenever you fill out one of their forms, you’ll receive an email alert. You can decide if you want all the text within the email or just the responses provided by your respondent. That way, you can take action right away, without logging into your JotForm account.
And by using JotForm in conjunction with Zapier, you can really get the most out of your form results. For example, you can automatically save your form responses to a spreadsheet, receive notifications about them in Slack, and even send your respondents’ information directly to your CRM.
You can even create tasks in your favorite project management apps whenever you receive a response from JotForm, sync JotForm submissions with your calendar so you don’t miss important events, or add respondents to Mailchimp as subscribers.
With JotForm’s Zapier integration, you can automate common workflows to save time and increase your productivity.
Ask a fill-in-the-blank question in your favorite form app
While JotForm may be the quickest and easiest route to fill-in -the-blank-questions, is not the only one. All you need to do is choose a form that supports multiple columns, and ideally allows you to remove the question text above the text and dropdown options.
Here are some options that will fit the bill. to the bill, at least in part:
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PlanSo Forms may be the next best option. Use your Paragraph element to add text, and simply drag and drop the sections close to each other to instantly turn them into a multi-column sentence.
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Outgrow is another great option, as it has a built-in template for completing questions. Just select the The Greek Quizzes template and you can create a form that will decide something for your user. Ask them to fill in the blanks and then you can recommend a product or service.
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123 Form Builderalso allows you to drag form fields side by side of the other. side, though you have a limit of four fields in a row, so you can’t include the question mark in our form.
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Wufoo includes CSS keywords, which you can use to arrange up to three form fields in a row for a simple fill-in-the-blank question.
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Gravity Forms, a form plugin for WordPress-powered sites, uses similar CSS-ready classes that allow you to add up to five columns, which you could use to create a form like the one above.
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Formstack includes multiple columns, but text and dropdown fields must include a header, which would require strategic writing to complete. the blank question seems correct.
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FormKeep simplifies HTML form coding and data management, and with custom CSS, you can create a form a single line.
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Aerobatic, a static site host, also makes it easy to do the same with custom webhook-based forms in Jekyll or other flat file CMS based sites.
This article was originally published in March 2017 and was updated in February 2021 with contributions from Elena Alston .
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