Carrying italics through compile

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
,
1

I’m not sure if this is a Scrivner issue, a font issue, or a Windows issue. I’m writing a book and I put character’s thoughts in italics. I compile pages to send to my critique group and the italics always disappearing leaving the words in the font of the rest of the document. How can I prevent this from happening?

2

First, make sure you are up to date, as this could be a bug that was fixed a while ago. Check the version via the Help menu, with “About Scrivener”, and then compare it with the version number on this page. If you have an old 32-bit computer, 3.1.4.1 is the latest version, and you’ll need to use the link at the bottom of that page to fetch legacy versions. (The function to check for updates may not work, as the updater was changed a while back. It is safe to just download the full installer and run it over your existing copy.)

1 Like
3

Amber, Thank you for the prompt response. My computer is a 64-bit, and I have the 3.1.5.1 version installed. When I compile, the problem exists whether I use a Scrivener format, or one I created. I select FONT: Ariel; COMPILE: Manuscript: and COMPILE FOR: Microsoft Word. (Docx).
Could any of these setting be causing the italics not to transfer?

4

Those settings should be fine, what I would take a look at is making sure that your are not using paragraph styles with too many settings, in places where this is not necessary. Scrivener’s style approach is a little different than most editors, in that it uses them as overrides to what would otherwise be thought of as normal or body text. The latter itself needn’t be styled at all, and in most cases should not.

If you use body styles...

So if you do have a body paragraph style, the first thing I would try is:

  1. Use File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To... to save a zipped copy of your project in its current state. I would give it a name for its purpose, like “Original Name - with body styles”.
  2. Now you are free to do whatever. Worst case if things go wrong, you can delete this copy of the project folder, and unzip a fresh replacement from the backup you created.
  3. Next, use the Format ▸ Style ▸ Delete Style submenu and choose the body paragraph style.

The result of this will leave the original text unchanged, with regards to how it looks, but it will strip the style assignment out completely. Now give that a quick test compile, and see if you’re now getting italics.

You may also be getting more of the compile Format’s intended formatting, now that you aren’t overriding the text formatting with styles.

Otherwise, download this sample project and change whatever it is you need to, to demonstrate the conditions in your project. If you compile this test, you will find I have set it up to use the settings you have described, and you will find Arial italics in the DOCX file. The only thing I did in the compile settings is enable the setting to strip text colour, as I used that in the main editor to help accentuate where the italics are in the sample.

So fix that project so it “breaks”, and then create a zipped copy of it and attach it to a response.

functioning_italics.zip (137.3 KB)

2 Likes