Changing format of endnotes in compile (PDF & .docx)

I have been requested to provide my publisher with a manuscript in PDF and .docx with endnotes in the following formats:

Within the text:
This is the the text 1).
(Note also that the period has to be placed after the bracket).

Within the endnote:
1) Comment for the endnote.

Apologies in advance if this has been answered previously. I read through both the manual and searched the forums and the Internet for an answer but found nothing.
I look forward to some guidance.

Edit: Just for clarification, I need the bracket “)” after the number for both the endnote position within the text and the actual endnote. Therefore, for example, “1)”.
Currently, endnotes appear with numbers only.

Scrivener itself only has minimal settings for this kind of stuff, which you will find in the Footnotes & Comments compile format option pane (double-click on the highlighted Format you are using, in the left sidebar, to open the format designer window, if you’ve never done so).

At any rate, detailed or advanced formatting should be done after compiling. I don’t know about Word, but in LibreOffice you can adjust punctuation with Tools ▸ Footnotes and Endnotes..., as well as which styles to use for the different elements. That said, I don’t think LibreOffice can automatically adorn the anchor with enclosing characters, just the marker at the end of the file. Maybe with Word it is easier.

Thanks @AmberV for your follow-up.

You are correct that Scrivener has only minimal settings for footnotes and endnotes. There is no option to select “1), 2), 3)…”. Darn! If Scrivener only had this option. :slightly_frowning_face:

Thanks for giving me an alternative. I spent some time trying to work things out in Word and have not gotten anywhere. :slightly_frowning_face: I will keep trying and post here if I stumble upon a solution.

It seems maybe Word has no way of doing that either. This guideline you have to use is especially sadistic! Or from the days of typewriters when everything had to be typed out anyway.

Hi @Darren, you haven’t indicated whether you are a Windows or Mac-user. I have to say I’m surprised if LibreOffice can’t do it easily; I don’t know about Word.

But if you’re a Mac-user, it can be done pretty easily using Nisus Writer Pro. The brackets and any spacing needed is done in the Style Sheet:

To remove the superscript on the marker in the text if required, you modify the Note Reference Character Style.

footnote-test.pdf.zip (57.0 KB)

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Thanks again, @AmberV, for looking into this for me. I read the Microsoft forum link you gave, and I stumbled across the same post in my search for a solution.

This guideline you have to use is especially sadistic! Or from the days of typewriters when everything had to be typed out anyway.

I receive such formatting requests quite often when my research has been accepted for publication in Japan-based academic journals, even when publishing in English. The journals here seem to prefer the “1), 2), 3)” format in footnotes/endnotes, which actually works well with Japanese text. The journals also request that English works follow the same formatting, which get, sort of. But, as you point out, the whole experience can prove borderline sadistic. It is frustrating having to work on all the formatting when your brain is fried from working day and night on a paper. I am going to sit with a Japanese colleague next month and find out how they format things in Word. There may be something I am missing.

Excellent! Thanks so much, @xiamenese. Your solution helps so much! :smiley:
Sorry, I should have said I am a Mac user. I have a copy of Nisus Writer Pro that I never actually use. I am now putting it to good use.

I have one more endnote-related issue that I hoping you may be able to help me with. I need to place the endnotes at the end of the main text but before the references. Can this be done in Scrivener, Word and/or Nisus Writer Pro?
(Apologies for straying a little off the path for a Scrinever support post).

Hello,

Happy to have been able to help. I haven’t used Word since they replaced the excellent version 5.1a (System 9), with the ghastly version 6 (which introduced the infamous paperclip!) just before the release of OS X. I’ve been a Nisus Writer (Pro) user since it first launched on OS X.

As for your endnotes vs references ordering issue, this is not something that has come my way. Also, how are you managing your references? Not that I need it much these days, I have Bookends as a reference manager. With that in mind:

  • if you are using Bookends, when you scan the document to convert the temporary citations and build the bibliography, I believe you can set it to generate the bibliography as a separate document, which you could then import into your text after the endnotes. Mind you, scanning in NWP normally inserts the bibliography at the end, so I would think it would follow the endnotes;
  • on the other hand, if you are creating your own references in a document in Scrivener, you might try moving that document out of the Draft and assigning it as Back Matter in the Compile dialog; it might do the trick for you.

As I say, I have no experience of this, but those are my immediate thoughts.

:slight_smile:
Mark

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Hello @xiamenese,

I ended up changing the format of the endnotes in Nisus Writer Pro and then exporting the file into Word. After adjusting the mix of English and Japanese fonts to ensure that they were correct, I was still left with the challenge of moving the endnotes to the end of the main text and removing the horizontal bar that Word automatically places at the beginning of the endnotes.

I spent a couple of hours searching for a solution to the horizontal bar issue on the Internet and finally stumbled upon the following explanation which worked:

The solution can be found on page 6 of the PDF. It is so like Word to make it so complicated!

After doing this, I was able to copy and paste the references and end matter so that now they are where they should be at the end of the document. I had to do some more formatting because Word treated these components as part of endnotes. Very frustrating, but it got the job done.

I am at some sort of loss trying to work out what the Back Matter option is meant to do. I assume it is meant to do what it suggests and places back matter at the end of the document. But for me, the endnotes were always placed at the end of the document, no matter what settings I tried out. This one has me stumped.

For this paper, I ended up placing my references manually. I have Bookends, but my reference manager of choice is Zotero. (There is something about Zotero that works the way my mind works. I know that Bookends works well with Scrivener, but I need to use a reference manager that works well for me. I say, use the reference manager that works best for you!) I used Zotero to generate references in the required style and then pasted them into Scrivener. A messy way to go about things, but it worked. Plus, I was wary of adding another automatic feature into the mix, as it could cause more trouble than it’s worth.

After dealing with these issues, I can understand why people complain about the “compile” feature in Scrivener. It’s especially frustrating that the compile process comes right at the end of writing. That said, I’m truly grateful to Scrivener for being an excellent tool in every other way.

For this paper, I really put Scrivener through its paces, and it never crashed—not even once! Working with Scrivener late into the night was an absolute joy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it just works in a way that suits me perfectly. Thanks to @kewms and the team! I can’t wait to see what is in store in the new software currently in development. (I wish had made it in time to get a place as a beta tester. Darn!).

All in all, I now have the manuscript submitted and am waiting on the galley proofs. Without all the guidance from you @xiamenese and @AmberV this would not have been possible. So many thanks to you both!!!

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Hello @Darren,

I’m glad you’ve got it all sorted out in spite of the complications imposed by Word.

As for (not just) Bookends, I agree with you that you should use the apps that suit the way you work, so if Zotero chimes with you, that’s great. I have Bookends because I found it long before Zotero began life, and it works well with both Scrivener and NWP; there was another reference manager around back then, whose name escapes me, which had a better press than Bookends, but I couldn’t get on with it at all.

As for NWP, to me it has a number of “killer” features, particularly when it comes to working with documents compiled from Scrivener:

  • as its native format is also RTF (built on the same text-engine as Scrivener) compiling to RTF is quick and doesn’t doesn’t require any “translation” to other document types;
  • being able to add a style sheet to a Scriv-compiled document, rather than having somehow to shoehorn the document into a pre-existing template;
  • the terrific Find and Replace, with the ability to macroize the formulæ if needed;
  • multi-key shortcuts;

for a start. And then, using Bookends, you can scan to create the full citations and build the bibliography from within NWP.

So that suits me, and I don’t know what I’d do if NWP ceased to be maintained and developed.

As for Back Matter, I haven’t needed it. I guess the most common use is for novelists to add pages at the end to promote other books they have written. But it could have any text, I presume.

One other comment: compiling… yes people tend to leave it to the end, but that is not a good time! Much better to spend time on sorting out compiling once you have enough text to be representative, because once you’ve got it sorted, it’s not a last minute stress.

:slight_smile:
Mark

P.S. The person you need to thank for Scrivener is Keith, @KB!

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This is very good advice.

Getting the formatting you want out of Word can be a nightmare, too. But it tends to be a nightmare that people tackle bit by bit, over the course of the project.

Scrivener, by design, allows people to defer almost all formatting decisions to the end. Which is great! You get to actually write in whatever environment makes the most sense to you!

But then it’s the end, and a deadline is probably looming, and suddenly you have to figure out functionality that you didn’t even know existed. And that, for better or worse, is very much not like how Word does things.

Compile early. Compile often. Put “tweak Compile settings” on the list of things you do to be productive when the writing itself isn’t going well.

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