Although I’ve owned and used Scrivener for several years now, I still feel like a rookie, this is a testimony to Scrivener’s power and many features.
Font and paragraph styling were added relatively recently and it was a welcome addition, although I do not expect Scrivener to be a design and page layout tool, I do have some expectations that it would follow a developed history of text processing.
I only use a handful of styles, mainly for clarity and a rough simulation of how the writing would look in the eventual printed book, where paragraphs break, etc.
I have created a paragraph style but the behavior of assigning the style to the text is not what expect…
When I write a paragraph, assign a style to that paragraph and then press the return key - creating a new paragraph, the former style is not assigned to the next paragraph.
In fact the Paragraph Style pull down menu switches to the indication of No Style from the former named style. I can select the new text and assign the style but this practice is laborious and tedious.
In any other text / writing software, a new paragraph always inherits the former paragraph’s style unless a new style is assigned. I get the feeling that Scrivener has a different setting or method for handling this operation.
(1) When you set up a style, at the bottom of the dialog, there is a drop down menu where you can set what style the next paragraph should have; clearly, you didn’t set that, so put your cursor in a paragraph with the style you’ve set up and go to Format > Styles > Redefine style (I’m on my iPad at the moment so I’m not sure of the exact wording), choose the style in question and click on the drop down to choose “This style” or whatever the wording is.
(2) Scrivener is built so that the “Normal” or “Body” style you need to set up in a word processor is actually “No Style”, the default style for the whole document—which is essentially what “Normal” is—that you set up in Preferences, the difference being that on compile “No style” comes out as “Normal”, while allowing you to easily define different “Normals” for different end purposes of the same textual matter … draft for friends etc. to read and comment, standard output for publisher, e-book, etc.
Believe me, I’ve been there: I had a system set up in Scrivener 2 which allowed me to use a macro in NWP to give proper styles to headings, body text, quotes and so on. So when Scrivener 3 came out, I set up all my NWP styles in Scrivener … and it caused me no end of trouble until I saw the light about “No style” vs “Normal”. Just define styles for text that departs from the norm, and let compile output your "No style " paragraphs as “Normal”.
But another thank you for revealing this feature to me, god this has some powerful applications. This it was in some of my other text software.
I just completed my transition from the Adobe suite: Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to Serif Labs’ Affinity Photo, Designer and most recently released, Publisher.
I am going o look for this feature in Publisher, if not there, I am going o suggest they add it.
Hello, I use Scrivener 3.2.2 for Mac OS Monterey 12.6.
I have set up a custom style and every time a hit Enter to start a new paragraph, the style goes away to No style.
I have to select the texte and define the style again.
This is pretty annoying.
It used to work fine, I don’t get it.
Anyone else?
Basically:
