How to modify text separator

Scrivener
,
1

Hi all, I am writing a text and use * as a separator between texts. This separator is generated on rendering. I have two questions:

  1. How do I remove text separator before and after the first text in each “chapter” (or whatever it is called, generated by a Folder)
  2. The * is nicley spaced in one direction but not the other. It is too close to the text above (good enough distance to the text below). How do I change that?

Thank you.

2

To make sure we’re on the same page, how are you introducing the separator in your compile settings? Have you used the Separators pane, or did you try using the Section Layout’s Prefix or Suffix fields? If you are using the latter, I would abandon that approach and use the Separators pane instead, specifically the “between” setting is what works best for the scenario you describe, so it only gets inserted between the same kinds of things (scenes, sections, lessons, whatever), rather than around everything no matter what.

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3

I just posted an article on separators with visual examples that might be helpful for you.

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4

Thank you. I did what you suggested. With the between I can now add a * and it appears as expected. However, I also need a linebreak before and after the star.

I can get this with a prefix/suffix line break, but that then also ends up on my headers and everyhing.

Sorry if it a stupid question… I don’t fully understand how all this works.

5

You can get that with this field as well, it’s just a little hidden. For Windows you need to hold down the Ctrl key when typing in stuff like tabs and enters, and with Mac it is the Option key. Note that on the Mac it won’t actually show special characters, so it’s a little awkward since multiple lines will be in a one-line interface, and you can only see one line at a time, but they should be there even if looks like nothing is happening.

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6

Thank you, yes that did the trick! Very much appreciated.

I’ve been struggling with this for quite a while and would never have figured that out myself. UI design wise I think it would be really great if that field was a text area rather than just a text box.

With kindness

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7

It’s a trick you can apply to most fields, incidentally. You can for example replace one carriage return with two of them, using Replacements (useful if you wrote intending to export to Markdown but didn’t double-space paragraphs in the editor), or have multiline running headers at the top of each page, stuff like that. I don’t know if we could rightly make every spot where this is possible a full text field like we do in Title Prefix / Suffix, but I do hear you. At the least I do think we should show invisible characters like ¶ and → more pervasively. That often is the compromise for such things.

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