When writing notes in Standard Text mode, I often get an idea for some dialogue. So I Cmd+8 into Screenwriting Mode and dash out that dialogue. That done, I want to switch back to Standard Text Mode-- but when I do so, I’m still stuck in the formatting of the last Scriptwriting element I was typing in (usually dialogue).
Could there be a feature where, when switching back into Standard Text Mode, Scrivener automatically changes the style to a default style?
That wouldn’t be a problem if you’d use styles instead.
Create a style for each special situation (notes, dialog, etc.), and use “no style” (the default formatting) the rest of the time.
You can assign shortcuts to them, too.
Your wish makes sense to me. I would guess it doesn’t already work that way because the designer was not really imagining people mixing modes in the same document.
Until all your dreams come true, I would just assign a shortcut to No Style and have the practice of invoking it after shutting off scriptwriting mode.
No style comes with a built in default shortcut anyway. On the Mac it’s Cmd-opt-0 (zero). On Windows it’s alt-shift-0, I think.
As a side note, we definitely do intend for this to be something you can hot swap between—that’s why you can. If you weren’t supposed to, it would probably be something more like a dedicated Project ▸ New Script File command with no way to change it after the fact.
Could there be a feature where, when switching back into Standard Text Mode, Scrivener automatically changes the style to a default style?
I suppose it could, but that would kind of go against how the software works overall—which isn’t really something we are actively doing but how rich text editors work generally: you keep typing in whatever formatting you were using until you change it.
Tools like the “No Style” shortcut, as mentioned above, are 100% for cases like this, no matter how you get to that condition, as this is something that can happen for a wide variety of reasons. It’s a quick and easy way to jump back to default formatting—and if you do use formatting of any kind (which scriptwriting is an form of in Scrivener).