I’m writing my third book but my first in Scrivener and I have a question about lines in books. When I am finished, I plan on compiling my book to be printed at CreateSpace and also as an eBook.
I have exercises in my book and was wondering if there is anything I should know - in terms of formatting - about lines.
So, for example, I might say: List five things below and then put lines like such:
How does this affect my compiling? I was considering of leaving a blank space, too. What are your thoughts? Thanks.
The one potential problem that I can see in print editions would be if the page width changed dramatically. If the line of underscores is long enough to wrap to the next printed line, your formatting will become very messy and ugly. So check your proof copy carefully.
The ebook editions are likely to pose a bigger problem, because you can’t keep the page width constant. Most readers allow the user to resize type, and therefore pages, at will, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s very difficult to enforce a particular formatting specification for an ebook.
On the other hand, people won’t be physically writing in their ebooks, either, so you don’t really have to leave room for them to do so. You could just live with the aesthetic issues, or you could choose some other indicator (a bullet? a dash?) of “space where the answer goes.”
Yes. The compile function allows you to specify the output format, and offers different options as appropriate to the format you choose.
If you haven’t already, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with Chapter 24 in the Scrivener manual, which explains the Compile function in detail. No need to read the whole thing at the moment, but you’ll want to give yourself an overview and get a glimpse of what’s possible.
Another alternative would be to use a single cell table, with an adequate line height to accommodate the writing space. You can format the borders as best suits you, and it has the advantage of keeping itself together as a whole across page breaks.
I also like the table idea. You can use table borders in lieu of underlines to create blanks, and it would likely be more robust against the mangling that ereaders can do.
The Table commands are accessible from the Format -> Table submenu. Since you want the table to be blank, the best bet would be to use just one column, with however many rows you want.
The bold lines are borders. They will print, while the grayed-out gridlines are just to show you where the table is. The Table pane allows you to add or subtract borders, or change their thickness and color.
