I’m struggling with formatting in Scrivener (for Macintosh) for compiling to PDF. An example. I need the first line of each scene to not have an indent, but when I compile the result has indents in the first line.
I have broken the manuscript into chapters and scenes. Inside compile, I can see that I have assigned the section layout Scene to the appropriate scenes. If I edit that layout (Scene), it takes me to “Section Text.” Under the setting tab for paragraph first line indents, I have checked remove from first paragraph.
It sounds like you are in the right place for all of this, but one thing that has a stronger say in formatting than your Section Layout settings are paragraph style settings (otherwise you could never do anything like a block quote as the Layout would trample on the styled formatting). If they are declaring an indent, then that is how it will always be. Do you use some form of “normal” or “body” style for your text in the editor?
If so, you might want to try creating backup copy of the project that you can return to if needed, with File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To..., then delete your body style from the project, and try compiling again.
Thanks a million for your reply. Wow, that solved it and put an end to hours of tinkering. The style was somehow overriding the compiler. I guess I’ll have to do without a body style…. Thanks again!
One of the purposes of a style is to define formatting that you don’t want the Compiler to change.
More precisely, a Style defines an exception from whatever the “normal” formatting is. So we recommend only using them for text that is in some way exceptional.
That part at least is no big deal. The main thing you would be using one for can be accomplished with default formatting, which like Section Layout settings, only impacts text that isn’t styled already. Thus in both cases, you can think of “no style” as essentially being “Normal”.