I feel like I must be missing something obvious. I have very specific blockquote preferences that I have grown accustomed to applying in Word with styles, but I can’t figure out how to recreate them in Scrivener!
Here is how it looks when I compile from Scrivener:
And here is how I want it to look:
What I want is for there to be a bit of space between the initial text and the blockquote, so that the blockquote starts where the next line of double-spaced text would have gone. Then I want the single-spaced blockquote to be indented by a full inch on the left and a full inch on the right. Then I want another line of space the same size as the one before. Then I want the paragraph after the blockquote not to have the first-line indent.
I’ve managed to accomplish some of these things (single spacing, left indent, empty line after blockquote) with the Essay Block Quote (Preserved) option but I cannot for the life of me figure out the right indent, the space before, or the post-blockquote lack of first-line indent.
Make sure the ruler is visible (Cmd-R) and that will permit you to change the margins. You will need to set up a special paragraph format for the paragraph that comes after the quote (i.e. set up a paragraph format without a first line indent, and apply that to any paragraph that comes after a quote). Bear in mind that Scrivener formatting presets don’t work like Word styles: if you change a style in Word, then all text that has that style will automatically change. In Scrivener text will remain as it was before unless you manually apply the formatting to it.
COMMAND-R! THAT was what I was missing! I knew it was something obvious!! Thanks!
Only – do you have any advice on the spacing between the paragraph and the blockquote? It just feels like the quote is too close to the text above it, but adding an empty line makes it too far away.
Thanks again!! This is trivial compared to the annoying alignment issues.
For that, either go to Format > Text Spacing or click on the spacing pop-up in the format bar. There you can change the line spacing or the “paragraph spacing before” if you just want extra space at the top of the paragraph.
Once you’ve got it how you want it, you can use Format > Formatting > New Preset From Selection to save your block quote formatting so that you can use it any time you want in the future, too.
