Paragraph Spacing Between Paragraphs of the Same Style

Scrivener Wish List
1

The typical formatting I use when writing a document in Scrivener is with indented paragraphs with no space between paragraphs. This is great, and works well for my writing flow.

However, when I have a Block Quote, I use a Block Quote style, which is unsurprisingly a Paragraph style. This style also maintains indent formatting with its paragraphs (in addition to some other formatting options that are immaterial to the issue at hand)

What I would like is for Block Quotes—including multi-paragraph Block Quotes—to be separated from the no-style paragraphs by a little bit of paragraph spacing. However, I do not want the multiple paragraphs of the Block Quote to themselves have that spacing between them.

In Word (and yes, I realize that Scrivener is not a WYSIWYG editor like word, and when it comes to compiling I can pick radically different things here), I would be able to do this for a given style in the Paragraph menu option “Don’t add space between paragraphs in the same style”.

I cannot figure out how to accomplish this in Scrivener (and in fact, I end up with all sorts of things that have larger spaces between Block Quote paragraphs than between no-style and Block Quote paragraphs!), and after having done some googling and skimming through the manual, I have come to the tentative conclusion that it does not exist.

If it does exist, my apologies; let me know how to do this and I will be thoroughly happy.

But if it does not, I do think this would be a helpful thing, though it would just apply to the appearance in the editor itself. I realize that there might be a fundamental limitation within the .rtf format here that prevents this, and if that’s the case, I also apologize for not having done sufficient research in that. Still, if this could somehow be added—in short, the ability to have different paragraph spacing between paragraphs of the same style than paragraphs of different styles—it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for making such fantastic software!

2 Likes
2

Could this be resolved with two virtually identical block-quote styles—one with paragraph spacing of X, and the other with paragraph spacing of Y?

If creating a single paragraph of block quote, use X.

If creating multiple paragraphs of block quote, use Y for the first and any sequential paragraphs, and then use X for the closing paragraph so that the “after” spacing is consistent.

Not elegant, but would that work for your needs?

Or have I misunderstood?

Best

L

3

Sample project attached…

[attachment=0]BlockQuotes.zip[/attachment][attachment=1]BlockQuotes.png[/attachment]

4

While that certainly is one way to accomplish getting that particular look in my project, it feels a little…inelegant. I would much rather have just one style that I apply to block quotes (especially when it comes to managing how those styles interact within compilation).

Thank you for the suggestion, however.

5

It would be great if we could choose the spacing before and after a particular style independently, so that it is different from the spacing between paragraphs of the same style.
I hope the entire style panel is updated. I think the initial idea was great when things were basics, but now it feels counterintuitive.

6

I think this can only be done in a slightly kludgy fashion in Scrivener, as it is a page-layout issue rather than a writing issue. So, to me, it’s something I would deal with in my word processor after compiling. I don’t use Word so don’t know about that, but I believe that Nisus Writer Pro has a macro to sort such things out.

But there is a minimal kludgy work-around for Scrivener, which, for me, makes use of the fact that I want first paragraphs and those that follow other elements like block quote, lists and images to have no first line indent. Now, although these indents can be simply removed at compile by ticking a box, it leaves the problem that the paragraphs in question are still designated Normal/Body; so any modification to Normal/Body in the word processor immediately puts the indents back. So I have a “No Indent” style.

So this is how I would solve it:

  • Set the default “No Style” to have a first line indent, and space before 0pt, space after 2pt;
  • Set “Block Quote” to have first line indent, space before 0pt, space after 0pt;
  • Set “No Indent” to have no first line indent, space before 2pt, space after 2pt. Obviously, rather than “No Indent” if you still want the first line indent in your paragraph following the quotes, you just make your style with the indent and call it something appropriate.

You’ll presumably need matching settings in Word. I have “Block Quote” and “No Indent” styles as part of my standard Style set up in NWP. NWP styles are cascading, so they are both based on Normal there, and any font changes to Normal propagate to the other two but without changing their ruler settings.

If you do that, you’ll have your inter-paragraph spacing on the body text and before and after the quotes, but not between quote paragraphs.

:slight_smile:
Mark

1 Like