A common printing convention is the “drop folio”, or page number in the footer on the first page of a chapter. Many books will have page numbers in the header, but not the footer, EXCEPT on the first page of the chapter.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to do this when compiling in Scrivener. While one can remove the header for the chapter start, one cannot ADD a footer only there.
To round out the already nice set of output options for PDF/print, it would be great to be able to check a box for footer only after page break.
It’s standard to put page numbers at the bottom of a page, so surely the option you mention to omit headers from the first page of a new section covers this for the vast majority of cases? (We do try to offer as many options as we can, but there are always going to be edge or more obscure requirements that require some final formatting in a word processor.) Can you give me an example of books or common formats that use the convention of page numbers at the tops of pages with drop folios on section starts?
All the best,
Keith
Intrigued by your comment Keith I looked at the page layout of four texts that happen to be open on my desk at the moment (Berry 2012, Bryman 2004, Graham et al 2007, Lee 1987) and noticed that a) those page numbers that appear are all at the top of the page, b) there are no page numbers at all on chapter or section starts, and c) some intra-chapter pages do not have page numbers on them (in Bryman this is consistently when multiple call outs appear on a page with no main text; in Berry it is inconsistent and is haphazrd)!
Mary Berry. Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook. Dorling Kindersley, Updated 2012 edition edition, 2012.
Alan Bryman. Social Research Methods. Oxford University Press, Second edition, 2004.
I think it is a good option in general as for some of us (me, for example), page numbers at the bottom distract a bit, pulling the eye down toward them as one reads (the first page of a chapter presenting a problem without a header, but nothing’s perfect and such pages occur much more rarely, obviously).
Besides the not-uncommon occurrence in books, one could argue for the option to round out the control over headers and footers, allowing on and off for either of them given break points.
Thanks for looking at it so quickly and I will hope that you can do it. Otherwise, I’ll go with page numbers at the bottom (I can’t bare the thought of doing everything in Word again, it’s so incredibly wasteful and annoying).
Agree with you on never using Word again. When I really need control of the layout of pages I revert to using LaTeX. It has the benefit that the typography is excellent too.
Okay, thanks for the information. If you want this, it is something you are going to have to add in Word, though, I’m afraid. I’ll consider how it might be incorporated in the future, though.
A few more counter examples of page numbers at the bottom of the page. The following, which I grabbed off my bookshelves at random, have page numbers at the top (and no page numbers on section/part breaks).
Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classic edition.
Cameron Newham and Bill Rosenblatt. (1995). Learning the bash Shell. O’Reilly Associates. First edition.
Franz Pöchhacker and Miriam Shlesinger (eds). (2002). The Interpreting Studies Reader. Routledge.
I did find some examples where the page number appears at the bottom on the start of a section and/or chapter but thereafter the page numbers appear at the top of the pages.
Rachel Sutton-Spence and Bencie Woll. (1998). The Linguistics of British Sign Language: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
Harminder Battu and Yves Zenou. (2010). Oppositional Indenties and Employment for Ethnic Minorities: Evidence From England. The Economic Journal, 120 (February), F52–F71.
but in
Tara Fenwick. (2012). Negotiating Networks of Self-employed Work: Strategies of Minority Ethnic Contractors. Urban Studies 49(3) 595–612, February 2012
the top margin of the first page contains the citation details and then subsequent pages have page numbers at the top (with alternating short title and journal name). The only thing on bottom of the initial page of Fenwick is ISSN, CODEN, Copyright, and DOI.
Both those papers selected at random.
Admittedly a small sample but includes publications from reputable publishers where the consensus would appear to be that the page number appears at the top. Page numbers for start of section/chapter may or may not appear and may or may not be positioned at the bottom.
Otherwise, I’ll go with page numbers at the bottom (I can’t bare the thought of doing everything in Word again, it’s so incredibly wasteful and annoying).