When I hit return from a paragraph that is formatted with the Body preset, the new paragraph does not have the correct formatting and I have to go to Format/Formatting/Apply Preset and tag it with the Body preset.
What do I need to do to have a new Body paragraph follow the styling of the previous Body paragraph from which it was created?
Any help would be appreciated.
In order to get this to work, there are instructions in this thread:
http://literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=49826
BUT… use of a “Body style” is discouraged in Scrivener. Styles should be a change from base; base should be “no style.” Use of a body style will result in compile being much more difficult than it ought.
To change the default text appearance to something that works for you: Set the default formatting in Preferences : Editing Pane: Formatting pane. To apply it to documents you’ve already created use Documents> Convert > Text to Default Formatting…
N.B. The above is based on Scrivener 3 for Mac, and assumes that you are using the scrivener 3 beta for Windows. If you are using Scrivener 1.x for Windows, that version doesn’t have true styles at all, only formatting presets. Nonetheless, the avoidance of a “body style” applies to Scrivener in any form. Locations of preference items and menu items will vary in Windows 1.x.
Thanks. I am using Version 1 of the Windows implementation. Do you have any information about whether the Beta is stable?
Regarding beta stability, I refer you to this thread in the beta forum:
http://literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=49861
As I don’t have a windows machine (I have to ask my son to check things for me and he isn’t running the beta) all my info is what I pick up from the forum threads which I don’t always read completely. 
There’s at least one freeze recently reported, spell check isn’t reliable yet, user interface glitches abound, and some Mac v3 features are not yet implemented–and still there are those who like it enough and are brave enough to move production work to the beta (with beau-coups backups.)
But for 1.9.7, if you want a preset to keep being preset when you type into the next paragraph, there shouldn’t be any problem, unless you move the cursor to an area that’s not within the formatting bounds. I just tested it on my son’s machine in the tutorial project, and it works as expected–since it’s just a preset, formatting persists until it’s deliberately changed.
If you could give some more details, someone more familiar with Windows Scriv may be able to tell what’s going on…
(the only thing I’ve ever run into like this on the Mac side is persistent leftover formatting from some stuff I’d pasted in from Pages. Using the nuclear option (cut, paste to a plain text editor, copy and paste back into Scrivener) got the stuff to behave like decent Scrivener text.) (I’ll sure be glad when the L&L people are back from holiday break.)
Thanks very much for your very detailed response. I’m impressed.
I think I’ll stick with Version 1 for the nonce, but should be able to solve my problem with what you’ve given me.
Happy New Year. May it get warmer. It was -4F/-20C here in Toronto last night as we went off to our celebrations.
Happy new year, and may it get warmer for you, indeed! Living in Southern California, warmth is rarely a problem, but it certainly would be nice if our annual winter rains would arrive before we have more firestorms… 