My preferred format for working is in the format popular on the web - single-spaced paragraphs with an empty line between them and no indent. However, for work purposes, I almost always output double spaced with an indent at the beginning of the paragraph and no extra empty line between paragraphs.
MS Word, horror that it is in almost every other regard, has the option to automatically put the extra line between paragraphs without having to add it manually (press return twice). This makes converting to double-spaced much easier because I only have to request double spaced and check the box that says “don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style” in the paragraph menu. Thus, I don’t have to go manually delete the spaces between the paragraphs if I want to output double-spaced.
I would help my workflow immensely if Scrivener had a similar feature that would include the spaces between paragraphs as a formatting feature rather than a text input.
Thanks so much for considering this update and please let me know if I need to clarify my request.
It has this feature already, and I’ve done it almost precisely as you describe for myself.
You’ll want to go to the Preferences, and find the settings for newly created documents, then set up the paragraph spacing and indents (or lack thereof in this case). Once you’re done, you can select files in the binder and find the “Convert to default formatting” menu item (try the search box under Help to locate it quickly). Once that’s done, any new documents you create will appear as you like them to, but when you go to Compile, you can change how the paragraphs come out then (and the fonts, and auto-generate CHAPTER 1, CHAPTER 2, … based on position in the binder, and…)
Sorry I can’t be more specific, but I’m sitting at my Windows work machine, and the Scrivener menus and Compile dialogue don’t match 100% of the time.
If you bring up the format bar, and go across to the Set Line Spacing button, and choose other, you will be able to choose the spacing before and after each paragraph. I think this gives you the control you are looking for.
Does it?
That will only work for the document you’re working on. Preferences is where you want to set this up so that you don’t have to keep making this change every time you create a new document or go back to a document you already created.
I’d set up your editor with the line and paragraph spacing and first-line indents however you like to work, and then set up two compile presets; use the “Formatting pane” to set up one style with the double-spacing, no extra line and a first-line indent, and the other with single-spacing, the extra line and no indent. Do it that way and you work the way you like and just choose the appropriate preset at compile time and let that handle it for you.
That’s what separating editing from compile is all about … you can even do your editing in Zapf Chancery or any other weird font you fancy, and have compile sort it out into appropriate fonts for each purpose later.
It (what I suggested above) wouldn’t be just for the current document, if you saved that format as a “Preset” and then set that as the default paragraph style.
But, myself, I would rather bring the project into a word processor and do such things there.
Doing it your way would mean the OP would have to choose the preset in the ruler time and time again, as these are not “styles” in the sense of Word or Nisus styles … they are merely a quick “paste font and ruler” system, as that is all the Apple text engine underlying Scrivener’s editor provides.
Doing it my way, and setting the default style in the Preferences formatting pane, means paragraphs automatically come up the way he likes to work and he can set the compile presets to produce the two types of layout as he wants. From that. It doesn’t prevent him then opening the resultant .doc/.rtf/.whatever in a word processor to make adjustments, but the adjustments would perhaps be far fewer.
That is what I do anyway. I always edit in Baskerville 13 point; compile in Adobe Garamond Pro 11 point if it’s something I’m going to turn into a PDF for my students; compile in Times New Roman 11 point if I want to send it to one of my Windows-Word based colleagues (virtually all of them, even those who have MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros, run Windows on them “as there is no software available for OS-X”!!). I then run it through Nisus Writer Pro to check, add text and image frames, scan through Bookends to format references and build bibliography, tweak as necessary and away it goes. It’s the whole point of the separation of editing and compile in Scrivener; edit in any font, size, appearance etc. you like, in whatever size chunks you like and let Scrivener put the whole together in whatever form is necessary to pass on to the next stage.
