Hello!
I can sense you might be getting a bit tired of these requests now but I’d just like to add my vote of support for possible-future keyword “tagging” of text passages.
Can I just say first that I - like everyone else, it seems - am quite in love with scrivener, and not at all keen to transfer over to Nvivo or any of the over horrible clunky qualitative data analysis softwares out there. I’m an anthropologist and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve spotted a few more of us in here, making similar queries. Unlike other social scientists, we don’t really have any need for the many fancy bells and whistles that dedicated QDA softwares offer; only the ability to navigate our way through vast tracts of fieldnotes. And for this, it’s true, the ability to highlight and code text passages would be incredibly useful.
The alternatives you’ve suggested sound like they might work fine but do keep it in mind for future versions of scrivener. Since you are marketing the software to researchers now as well as novelists - you might be surprised how popular this simple feature would prove (not only with anthropologists but also, I imagine, historians, literature students, and people working throughout the humanities).
Thanks very much - keep up the good work!