Throughout my manuscript, there are places where my text is aligned to center. But when I compile it ignores that alignment and pushes the text that should be centered to the left. How can I compile it, so that this text stays centered? Thanks.
Can you post a few screenshots, including the Compile/Formatting options dialog(s)?
Never mind. I figured it out.
In the Compile/Formatting tab, there’s a tiny “Options” button. In the dialogue that comes up there’s an option to preserve the alignment and to even specify “Centered text only”.
However, after compile, the centered text looks a little off-center, a little too far to the right. But I suppose it has something to do with the automatic indent that pushes this isolated, centered text to the right. Kind of a bummer.
Within the documents in the editor, you can select the centred text and then choose Format > Formatting > Preserve Formatting. In the compile formatting options, set Preserve Formatting only preserves to alignment and tabs and indents. That will prevent the first-line indent affecting that text.
Alternatively, you can just select the option in the text formatting overrides to preserve tabs and indents generally, if you don’t need them overridden anywhere else in the document. The Preserve Formatting option just gives you finer control to prevent the overrides only on that selected text.
Well, I tried what you said, but it still seems to be indenting that line of text. I know I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what I should do.
Is it indented in the editor? Format > Show Ruler. I’d assumed you already had it set up the way you wanted in the editor, but if it’s intended there you’ll need to adjust that. You can use copy/paste formatting to quickly fix all the centred text throughout your project.
It indents the first line of every paragraph automatically. I don’t know where that is set, so… I don’t know.
The default formatting for the editor is set in the Formatting tab of Scrivener > Preferences…, so you can use the format bar and ruler there to adjust the sample text to how you like it. This will affect new documents you create (in any project); to change existing documents to match, select them in the binder (Ctrl- or Shift-click to select multiple) and then choose Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style. You’ll be presented with some options to limit the conversion; in your case here, if you decide to run the conversion on your existing project, you’ll want to be sure to check “Preserve alignment” so your centred text stays centred.
That’s to set the default, or to convert documents to the default. To adjust the ruler for individual paragraphs within your document, which is probably all you want to do here, you can select the paragraph and use the editor in the ruler (toggled by Format > Show/Hide Ruler, or Cmd-R). Dragging the top horizontal rectangle there all the way left will remove the first-line indent for the paragraph. So do this for your centred text and mark the text with Preserve Formatting, then in compile formatting options have Preserve Formatting preserve both alignment and tabs and indents.
…All that said, if we’ve misunderstood and you’ve already formatted everything in the editor exactly as you want it and the problem is just that the compile formatting is changing that, just deselect “Override text and notes formatting” in the Formatting tab of compile. Your project then will compile using the formatting in the editor.
Thanks for all the help.
I finally got it to do what I wanted it to do, and the solution was a combination of everything that has been written here.
I needed to select my centered text in the editor and use the ruler to move the indent over on those lines. I also needed, with the text selected, to toggle the Preserve Formatting menu option, and then in the compiling/formatting options select the preserve alignment option. Doing all these things centered the text properly once compiled.
Thanks again.