hello,
I’m a PhD student about to finish my thesis (eek), looking for some help with one thing that I just cannot figure out before I export it for printing: when I use a round bracket (which is all the time, for references), it adds a line break.
does anyone know why this is, and how can I stop it happening?
Dear Sarah,
Congrats on your impending completion! I don’t know what is causing the problem you’re seeing, but I know a few questions I would ask in order to shed light on the problem.
It would be a help to know what Compile format you are using and what document format is your target (e.g., Word).
Which of these characters is producing the linebreak: ‘(‘ or ‘)’? And does the bracket survive or is it being literally replaced by a linebreak? And is this happening to every instance or just some?
gr
thanks for your response GR - so I am using Word for compile but the problem happens when I am writing in Scrivener itself and then is exported to Word
the break happens after this bracket - )
The bracket stays on one line, and then the text after it starts on the next line.
I think it happens when I have used cut and paste for the text that includes the bracket, but can’t be sure as sometimes it is not noticeable, if it happens to be at the end of a line anyway.
I can make it go back up by using the delete button, but as I write more, it all gets pushed out of kilter again
(sorry if I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it very well…)
You seem to indicate* that the linebreak appears in Scrivener already — so that is helpful as it is not related to compiling to Word.
Copying from external sources and pasting (rather than using Paste & Match Style) can introduce many headaches depending on where you are copying from.
If you Show Invisibles (if enabled on your toolbar this is the one with the pilcrow or paragraph symbol on it), what do you see immediately following one of these close parentheses?
I would try this: use Scrivener’s Zap Gremlins command. This will operate on whatever document or documents are in the Editor pane. That command is precisely aimed at weeding out weird invisible characters that have no proper function in your document.
I would find some one doc in your project which is known to have an occurrence of the problem, snapshot it and then try zapping gremlins. If that compiles problem-free, then you can do the whole project that way. As always, make sure you have good backup before doing something to your whole life’s work!
If zapping gremlins doesn’t work, but you see there is a special (invisible) character following the haunted close parens, then you may have little choice but to walk through and weed them out manually.