Hi, I’m an ex-TV producer with no academic training, reasonably - but not very - tech savvy. I’m about half way through a historical biography and loving the intuitive nature of Scrivener. However, I have two questions about formatting endnotes.
Instead of a superscript number, I’d like the endnote to refer to the page number + an extract of the text it refers to. Can Scrivener do that or do I need to work with a citation manager?
In the case of some chapters, I’d like to add some introductory text to my endnotes without them referring to any specific piece of text. Is that possible?
Thanks in advance for any help,
Alex
Can I ask, do you want your endnotes to be placed at the end of the chapter to which the notes refer. or do you want them placed at the end of the whole manuscript?
Although using a citation manager would not in itself help with your questions, as they are essentially layout matters, I would still recommend using one; I have Bookends, though many use Zotero and there are others.
The question that needs the most thought is not having numerical markers but page references as links in the endnotes. I’m not sure about that, so I hope others will bring suggestions.
Do bear in mind that layout is not what Scrivener is about, so my answer is that I would leave sorting out the layout of endnotes to my word processor (NWP in my case) post compile.
From a technical standpoint, I can add that it is “impossible” for Scrivener to locate the page number of an excerpt of text (for it’s own PDF/Print output), nor does it have the tech to insert the necessary codes for that in word processing file outputs. Without getting too technical, to do that you need to insert what is referred to as a “bookmark”, in word processing jargon, which is as you might expect, a reference to a specific spot within the text (down to the letter). Bookmarks are powerful though, in that they can be referred to in the text itself with other codes, such as one that would print the page number it falls on.
I put scare quotes around the word impossible, because it is possible, just probably not in a way you would consider useful. For Scrivener to create a bookmark and then link to it with a dynamic page numbering token it needs to be in its own section in the binder. I.e. your binder outline needs to be as detailed as all of your excerpts would be.
While you will not find a stronger advocate for making extremely detailed outlines (I will even advocate for splitting things down to major elements such as tables and figures, and the Scrivener project for the user manual PDF has a draft folder with close to 3,000 entries), but even I wouldn’t suggest you should split something down to paragraphs just so you can link to it.
If that’s the style of notation you’re going for, then all of that is probably best deferred to when you’re out of the drafting phase and in other software, finalising said design. You could certainly use Scrivener’s endnote feature for the moment though, to mark your intentions and make it easy to build such a list. I don’t know of any software that actually does what you want as a “feature” though—you will probably need to build such an excerpt+pageNum listing by hand using formatted text and a lot of bookmarks.
Scrivener probably can’t (how to both grab the text from elsewhere and know what its final page number will be?). Neither could any citation manager I know of, which do not generally know about page numbers. Pagination is the purview of the final layout engine; this would be the domain of some sort of LaTeX/Typst code or WYSIWYG wordprocessor/layout engine macro.
Thank you so much for your prompt and helpful reply! To answer your question, I’m pretty sure I want the endnotes at the end of the book; I’m trying to write a popular history (the story I’m researching reads a bit like a novel) but I want those readers who are interested to follow up sources/references and I’d like the book to be taken seriously by academics, even though it’s not necessarily an academic book. The consensus seems to be aligned with you that I need to leave that to the post-compilation phase. Thank you anyway.
Thanks Amber. I’m probably getting ahead of myself here. I’m trying to write a piece of popular history and want people who want to, to be able to read it like a novel. At the same time, I wanted to give the more academic reader (or anyone who is curious) to be able to access the endnotes in order to dive deeper into the story and/or track down sources. I guess I’m looking a way to provide endnotes without intruding into the main text. Anyway, I appreciate very much your long and thoughtful response. I think I will put this on hold until I’ve got something ready to compile!
Thank you! I’m probably getting ahead of myself here. I’m trying to write a piece of popular history and want people who want to, to be able to read it like a novel. At the same time, I want to give the more academic reader (or anyone who is curious) the chance to access the endnotes in order to dive deeper into the story and/or track down sources. I guess I’m looking a way to provide endnotes without intruding into the main text. If possible … but I guess I’ll put this on hold until I’m in the compile stage. Thanks so much for your time and trouble.
