Paragraphs formatting for entire non-fiction manuscript

[marcusss]

Hi all,

I’m playing around with formatting options and have seem to come to a dead end. My problem is with paragraphs and indents.

I seemed to have messed a whole bunch of things up by adding manual indents throughout my manuscript. During compile there are may paragraphs throughout that are not formatted the way I intend because I have added an extra tab. I have used the strip leading tab function to try to correct for this, but now I am stuck on this problem:

1. I have formatted the document paragraph styles using Format>Paragraph, but this does not apply to any new document I create. Essentially, I have made the first line of new paragraphs indent by 0.25", but this rule does not apply for new documents. Does anyone know how to set the paragraph style for the entire document, even for “new text” documents to be added or do I have to format as. I go?

2. How do people generally format their paragraph styles in the editor vs compiler? I’d like to be able to see the different paragraphs visually since I’m working with a 200-300 page manuscript.

Looking forward to the suggestions.

[RobG]

If you set the formatting for a paragraph as you would like it, including a first-line indent, you can go to Format>Make Formatting Default to set that as the formatting for any new document. You can then apply that to existing documents by selecting them in the Binder and going to Documents>Convert>Text to Default Formatting. There are also Copy/Paste Formatting commands in the Format menu that can be used to tidy up existing text.

Once you get to the Compile stage you can tweak the level of indent and do things like remove the first-line indent from the first paragraph after a page break.

[Carol.Efron]

Hi there,

I am having a terrible problem with this in my new project in the latest Scrivener.

I have folders for chapters and text documents inside

I copied from Word, and have paragraph indents that are the same throughout that document.

I pasted it into Scrivener texts. I had my default set for Novel Times Roman.

For some reason, the first paragraph has no indent.

So I followed your advice below exactly.

It looks okay in Scrivener but when I compile, the indent in the first paragraph in each scene is going.

I very much would appreciate your advice as to how to fix it. Thanks in advance!

@RobG

If you set the formatting for a paragraph as you would like it, including a first-line indent, you can go to Format>Make Formatting Default to set that as the formatting for any new document. You can then apply that to existing documents by selecting them in the Binder and going to Documents>Convert>Text to Default Formatting. There are also Copy/Paste Formatting commands in the Format menu that can be used to tidy up existing text.

Once you get to the Compile stage you can tweak the level of indent and do things like remove the first-line indent from the first paragraph after a page break.