Need help with styles!

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I just bought Scrivener and started writing a novel with it. I can’t figure out for the life of me, however, how styles work in this program. I have read sections about it in the manual, but they don’t make sense to me. I mostly first need help with the following:

  1. Is there a way to change the basic style (for new sections for a project)? If so, how? And will it work retroactively on all the sections already created? And in addition, what is this style called? Is it the “Default” style?

  2. Is there a way to change the basic style for EVERY new project? Some way to make a change in Scrivener so that whenever a new project is created, the style you see when you start typing in a new section is a certain way?

  3. Finally, how DOES the style panel work in preferences? I go to Preferences, Text Editing, and then the area at the top entitled “Default Main Text Attributes” and I immediately get confused. There is a sample of some text in the big window in this section, but I have no idea what it is. The box at the top left, even though it has a drop-down list when you click it, just says “Styles.” So I don’t know WHAT the style currently displayed in the box is.

It’s all incredibly confusing to me and I haven’t managed to find any postings on it here. I somehow managed to change something in the preferences to create a new style called “Body” that every newly created section has (with the exact indents I want), but I had no idea how I did that. And it bears no resemblance to the Default style. If the Default style is the default, why are newly created sections getting the Body style? (Though that’s exactly what I want, I’m still curious.) And when I create new sections in a different area, like Reference, they DON’T have the Body style; they have a completely different style, with a different font!

Sorry to be such a whiner on this, but I’m going nuts. I have figured out most of the other stuff in the program, but I want to get this locked down before I get too many chapters written. I already have 19 sections, and they are a mishmash of different styles.

ANY help would be appreciated, really. Thanks. I just cannot I cannot get the hang of this. Thanks!

2

Preferences.

Text editing tab.

Check it out. :slight_smile:

3

The text you’re seeing is simply a visual example. Try using the ‘Styles’ and Set Font’ buttons and you’ll see any changes reflected in the display window. The display to the left of the Set Font button indicates the current default font.

You can change any document to the default style by using ‘Formatting to Default Text Style’ - find it from the tool bar under ‘Documents’ / ‘Convert’.
:slight_smile:

4

Thanks, all!