Great!
If you need anything more complicated than toggling the Include scriptwriting CSS in the CSS compile format option pane, then yeah we can split it off.
1 Like
Yes please letâs split it off if possible. Itâs midnight here and Iâm going to have to deal with this one on Thursday. Itâs a big one, as itâs a trilogy so Iâve got to get the formatting right in the e-book and in the word and pdf for the agents etc
1 Like
HI amberâŠIm trying to find where this topic was split off to and whether it was answered. Epub compile not acknowledging Script Mode layout when in a novel (normal writing mode). Word compile is acknowledging it fine but one editor i work with likes me to upload an epub to BOOKS. Only one in six chapters are in scriptmode in the book btw @AmberV
oh and by the wayâŠi tried toggling include scriptwriting CSS but it didnât change anything. Iâm not sure I was toggling it when editing in the correct placeâŠmight need a step by step explanation of what you mean by this and where exactly when itâs only for a scene here or there or an occasional chapter @AmberV
Canât find anything on this topic ⊠not here in forum nor on you tube âtoggling scriptwriting CSSâ nor âcompile scriptwriting modeâ etc @AmberV
You seem to be responding in the very topic I made, when you asked me to split it off.
i tried toggling include scriptwriting CSS but it didnât change anything. Iâm not sure I was toggling it when editing in the correct placeâŠ
The option merely adds CSS formatting to make text look a certain way, if it is formatted as a standard screenplay. Itâs up to the content to have scriptwriting sections in the binder, formatted using those elements.
For example what you are calling ânormal writing modeâ looks like this in an ePub:
<p>Paragraph one...</p>
<p>Paragraph two...</p>
<p>Paragraph three...</p>
And what you are referring to as âScript Modeâ would look something like this:
<p class="scene-heading">INT. A DIRTY BAR</p>
<p class="action">Blah blah...</p>
<p class="character">JANE DOE</p>
And of course with the CSS checkbox enabled, you get such lines as the following, in the stylesheet.css file within the .epub:
.scene-heading {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
.action {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; font-family: monospace;}
.character {text-align:center; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
Of course it has the whole sequence of standard screenplay elements inserted, Iâm just demonstrated a few here.
So this is what would be, as I suppose how you would describe it, a technical acknowledgement of screenplay formatting in an ePub. What parts of that then arenât there, is the sort of question to ask.
By the way, if your ebook editor/viewer doesnât show you this level of detail, a good tool for that is Sigil. Even if you arenât an HTML/CSS expert, you should be able to find your way around the content and see whether things look like the examples above.
2 Likes
thank you !!! i have never seen this message so not sure where it was! Will explore this. Changing CSS is a bit scary but then again i edit my wordpress site!
the bits that are msising are the alignment of the speech is going flush to LH edge of the page, for instance
But the CSS box is FULL OF SO MUCH TEXT! Eeek
But hereâs the issue. I cannot see indents for DIALOGUE at all. They are all 0 indent. Why would that be? When it is Scriptwriting? SPEECH/DIALOGUE should all be justified and it doesnt appear to be. How (and why isnât it already set up) should I change it:
- Scriptwriting */
.scene-heading {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
.action {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; font-family: monospace;}
.character {text-align:center; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
.parenthetical {text-align:center; text-indent:0; margin: 0 0 0 0; font-family: monospace;}
.dialogue {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 0 20% 0 20%; font-family: monospace;}
.transition {text-align:right; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0 0 0; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
.shot {text-align:left; text-indent:0; margin: 12pt 0pt 0pt 0pt; text-transform:uppercase; font-family: monospace;}
1 Like
Iâm talking about Standard UK Stageplay by the way. HANGING INDENTS for the dialogue.
MARY: Blah blah blah blah had a little lamb
its fleece was pretty dirty actually
LAMB: Who you calling dirty?
It wont do the HANGING INDENTS for Maryâs speech here either! Even though I have spaced it in the text. It is doing the dialogue flush with left margin (MARY) and it shouldnât be
Doesnât do that when compiling to WORD. I have examined the CSS sheet and I donât know how to CSS Code a HANGING INDENT
etc
Can I attach screenshots of what itâs doing which I dont want? Iâm tryhing to find here how I cn attach a screenshot
so apparently according to chat gpt this is what i need to do but WHERE do it do it? Compile settings doesnât let me edit a CSS style sheet (and Iâm nervous to do so in case it does it to all the font. I only want it in the chapters set as SCRIPTMODE. and iâm nervous i will lose the default if i mess up or it doesnt work
NEW CHAT GPT CSS with settings I want
.dialogue {text-align: left; margin: 0 20% 1em 20%; /* top and bottom spacing for readability */ font-family: monospace; text-indent: -1.5em; /* pull first line left */ padding-left: 1.5em; /* indent wrapped lines */ }Well okay, one thing to make clear here is that my wording in the previous message, and that of the user manualâs documentation for this checkbox, is meant to be very specific: this checkbox adds CSS classes for screenplay formatting. It was something that we hand-coded, as I recall, to optimise the design for something as variable in presentation as an ebook.
For example, and to answer one of your questions incidentally, the indent for the dialogue is expressed as 20% margins to the left and right of the text (or a column of text 60% of the width of the display, down the middle). A real screenplay is of course a precise number of inches, not â20%â, but actual inches would make no sense in an ebook.
That said, these example styles could still be used as a starting point for another kind of script entirely, and it seems youâve gone a ways into figuring that part out. Itâs a matter of finding bits of script that donât look right in the HTML, in Sigil, seeing what CSS class Scrivener is generating for them, and then adjusting either the CSS we provide, or making up your own. Again, it sounds like youâre already on the right path there, I just mean to affirm you of that.
As to that, you neednât be worried about experimenting with your compile settings! You can always right-click on the Format you are using, in the left sidebar, and select the âDuplicate and Editâ option. Now you can do whatever you want; blow stuff up. If it really doesnât work out, you can delete it and start over. But if it works, you can delete the old one and move on to using the new one.
CSS is added in exactly the same place where you found that checkbox. What I would do is copy the whole scriptwriting chunk, as you did to paste it here in the forum, then turn off the CSS checkbox and paste it at the bottom of the editable left column, where you can modify it. That way you donât have it in there twice, once where Scrivener inserts it and then again where you pasted it all.
I also recommend doing the initial modifications in Sigil, since you can preview them immediately. When you get something that looks good, copy and paste the solution back into your compile settings.
NEW CHAT GPT CSS with settings I wantâŠ
I donât think that is going to do exactly what you want, itâs a confusing result. That will make a very small hanging indent within a block of text that is constrained to a 60% width column in the middle of the screenâand for some reason add a full line of space above it âfor readabilityâ, which you didnât ask for, and is a bold assumption to make since hanging indents already announce paragraph formatting just fine all by themselves.
I.e. as with nearly every LLM answer Iâve seen, it is sometimes kind of right while somehow being confidently very wrong at the same time. 
What it is right about is the hanging indent mechanic: you want a negative âtext-indentâ value that matches a positive âmargin-leftâ value. Push the text over, then pull the first line back, is how I like to remember it. You just probably want something way more than the 1.5 letters (roughly) it suggested. So in this case I would ditch the âmarginâ attribute, and do something like this:
text-indent: -5em;
margin-left: 5em;
Or, if you get unwanted spacing above/below the element:
text-indent: -5em;
margin: 0 0 0 5em;
That will clear all margins for the top, right and bottom of the line, respectively, and then add 5 to the left.
Bear in mind however that you are trying to implement something that was designed with word processing conventions in mind, not ebooks. In many cases you can implement word processor formatting in CSS, but when it comes to hanging indents and tab stops, like this particular script uses, you canât really actually do this that way. There are no tab stops. Thus you canât have part of your line (the character name) over here, and then a variable amount of whitespace to the right of it, before a linear block of text for the dialogue starts, which subsequent lines all indent flush width.
You can execute that look with HTML/CSS, but it involves an entirely different kind of structure as you need to float blocks and do some relative positioningâI wouldnât actually want to mess with it in ebooks since not all of what you would need may be fully supported by ebook readers.
Honestly, as with the stock screenplayâs â20%â fudge, youâll probably need to content yourself with little abstraction like what I suggested above. Thatâs not going to look like a UK stage play precisely, but it does get the idea across in a way most people will be fine with.
1 Like
gosh you really are going above and beyond trying to help. thank you. i think ive lost the will to live!
new question: 1 do you happen to be able to find a screenshot of how a stage play would look in books in epub? it just looks ghastly on mine and is unreadable. not having a space like a tab, between the character name and then a hanging indent is so tricky to read in BOOKS.
2 when you say find the text i want script and examine the CSS on itâŠwhere is the CSS for specific sections of a book? I am just compiling the whole bookâŠbit confused by that
3 perhaps this is a simpler approach for me to take: what if i just change one simple thing. so that the dialogue is clearer to read in the script mode sections, what code would i put to have a SMALL line break, not an entirely single return but almost, between charactersâ dialogue?
4 how do i put screen shots up here?
1 Like
Iâve never encountered an attempt to make a stage play on an ebook, so I donât know if there are any examples out there to pull from.
when you say find the text i want script and examine the CSS on itâŠwhere is the CSS for specific sections of a book? I am just compiling the whole bookâŠbit confused by that
You go to where the text is in the chapter, and see what âclassâ Scrivener is putting on that paragraph <p class="...">. Then you go into the stylesheet.css file and look for that class, which will have a dot in front of its name. That is what you need to modify. If you donât find it, like you wouldnât for Character & Dialogue, then you would add a new entry in the CSS file for it, probably copying from something close to it, like .dialogue.
âŠwhat code would i put to have a SMALL line break, not an entirely single return but almost, between charactersâ dialogue?
One full line height is â1emâ, so give it a fraction, where 0.5em is going to be half a line, you can give it greater precision if you want, too, like 0.67em. I sometimes find I donât like anything in the tenths and want something in between.
margin: 0.67em 0 0 0;
Again, the four numbers are top, right, bottom and left. You can control spacing and indent with these four numbers.
how do i put screen shots up here?
Before you start typing a response it tells you how. 
2 Likes
You go to where the text is in the chapter, and see what âclassâ Scrivener is putting on that paragraph <p class="...">
But how do I see what âclassâ? I have not used CSS in the editor, only in the compile windows have I been looking at it
[quote=âAmberV, post:12, topic:147255â]
One full line height is â1emâ, so give it a fraction, where 0.5em is going to be half a line, you can give it greater precision if you want, too, like 0.67em. I sometimes find I donât like anything in the tenths and want something in between.
[/quote]
So, this is something I am entering into the style sheet in the COMPILE window right? Not in the editor?
gotcha!
Before you start typing a response it tells you how.
OH my lord! It does too. I have always ignored that!!! Never even read itâŠafter all these years 
If youâd like me to start a new thread for this thatâs ok but quick question SCRIPTWRITING MODE. The shortcuts donât seem to be working as in type d for dialogue/character and s for scene etc It just type the letter instead of the shortcut. I assume it is because I have already typed something? In which case, is there a Command + d style shortcut?
Finally for now before I go to sleep, interesting to know that you donât know of people who read scripts in ebooks. I would have thought it quite common.
I have tried many times to compile to kindle (emobi.) but for some reason it tells me Iâm forbidden to do it or some such error. I just gave up and now I just send it to epub and read it in BOOKS or email it to my kindle. Do you ahve any idea why I cant compile to emobi?
I have the newest OS one can have. As my Pro is brand new
Sorry for the delay in getting back to this. Itâs been a combination of a long weekend, followed by a bunch of server stuff, for me.
I hope youâve figured out how to look up the HTML Scrivener generates, in Sigil, and mess with the appearance of it with CSS. I donât quite know what more I can add, and can only guess that the missing ingredient remains that you arenât using an ePub editor to examine the compiled results, and are still looking for these things somewhere in the project, or its compile settings.
It just type the letter instead of the shortcut. I assume it is because I have already typed something? In which case, is there a Command + d style shortcut?
Iâve never heard of the result you describe, but §19.1.1, Selecting the Current Element with the Keyboard, is the section in the user manual that covers the various options.
âŠinteresting to know that you donât know of people who read scripts in ebooks. I would have thought it quite common.
Oh Iâm sure that has more to do with the circles I am in (or not in, in this case), than anything else, but it wouldnât surprise me if there has been longstanding friction toward using ebooks for proofs, just because of all the stuff youâre running into, with the clash between extremely rigid formatting expectations and an environment that almost scoffs at the concept.
I have tried many times to compile to kindle (emobi.) but for some reason it tells me Iâm forbidden to do it or some such error.
Thatâs probably just as well! Nobody, not even Amazon, uses that format any more, and it was never suitable for anything other than KDP upload to begin with (it always caused bugs and problems when side-loading). They stopped accepting .mobi about a month ago, after a few years of deprecated support. Weâll most likely be removing it sooner than later. If anyone still has a 15+ year old Kindle that still works, there are tools that can make a .mobi.
And on the matter of conversion, Calibre is a device manager as well, and will automatically convert ebooks to the optimal format, upon upload to an attached device, and lets you manage what is on it directly. But email works as well.
1 Like