I’ve had problems with this before - i think because of some cutting and pasting in my document?
So, I’m working on my novel in Scrivener, I compile manuscript and export it. I look at the Word export - everything is looking great…then suddenly, my nice ample margin (or right hand indent…whatever you want to call it) is barely there…the sentences run nearly to the edge of the paper.
Is the a Scrivener issue? A Word issue? Or both?
I’d rather deal with it, if possible, within Scrivener so I’m not futzing with every single export.
This sounds like an issue with margin over-run that I’ve come across a few times before. Basically the Scrivener ruler’s zero-point is at the left edge of the content box, while most word processors have the ruler zero-point at the paper edge, meaning there is a +skew of however big your margin is (usually 1") between what you see in Scrivener and what you see in the word processor. Setting a right-indent of 7" in Scrivener turns into a right-indent of 8" in the word processor, which is outside of the text box and close to the edge of the physical page. In a typical US Letter 1" margin setup, the content box is 6.5" wide, so any right-indents in Scrivener should be at or under that value. Any over, and it will over-run outside of the margin area, producing odd behaviour in some word processors.
Not to sound as though I’m contradicting myself with the 6.5, but actually the best thing to do is reset Scrivener’s margins to auto. You can tell they aren’t auto if you maximise the window (fixed width option off), and the text stops somewhere before the right-edge of your monitor. The text should flow to whatever width your window is, if it stops short, then there is a margin. Unless you need to set a right-indent, like in a block quote, then there is no reason to manually set the width.
The way to reset the right-margin is to simply drag it all the way to the right. You’ll know you did it correctly if, after letting go of the control, it kind of snaps back a bit to the left. Now when you resize the window, the text should flow automatically.
If you do want to constrain the width of the lines visually, for legibility purposes or whatever, try to make use of the Fixed Width option in General preferences, under “Default Editor Width”. A value of around 560 pixels is roughly equal to a standard printed page width (at 100% text zoom), but since this is all virtual, it doesn’t make a huge difference if that is accurate or not.
With various bits of the manuscript cut and pasted from other sources (including another Scrivener doc), some paragraphs seem to follow along with that little blue arrow and some don’t. So i get narrow lines and then further down, long lines.
if i set to fixed width of 560 (which I don’t really need but if it solved the issue, great)…my column gets tiny.
BUT…no matter what I do - when I compile and export my manuscript, it looks exactly the same…a few paragraphs with a proper right hand indent of about an inch…and most paragraphs with lines going nearly all the way up to the edge.
is it a “style” issue or a “compile ms” issue? I don’t get it (this happens all the time and sometimes I happen upon a solution—today, no).
So, the issue is this: the blue arrow is not a global thing, it is paragraph based, which is what allows you to have a special right-indent for blockquotes. Each paragraph needs to have their right margin set to auto. It sounds like you have some (probably written in Scrivener) that go all the way to the right (and thus compile correctly so that they fit into the text box) and others pasted in that have a margin baked in, and are thus falling victim to the 1” skew and escaping the text box in the final product.
Fortunately, you don’t have to go through a fix every single paragraph one by one. Here is a screenshot emulating (roughly) what I suppose you are seeing:
[size=9]Mixed margins from pasted content[/size]
There are two ways you could do this:
Select all ([b]Cmd-A[/b]) and drag the right-margin all the way to the right-edge of the ruler, setting everything to auto
Using the [b]Documents/Convert/Formatting to Default Text Style[/b] menu command
Selectively fix paragraphs around special cases, like that block-quote in paragraph three.
Let the compiler handle this, by setting the text format override in the third tab. This is often the best way as you can write however you like and let Scrivener handle the homogenising, but it’s also not a good option if your documents are meticulous formatted for print.
In both cases #1 and #2, the blockquote paragraph will get reset to a standard paragraph. So if you have a lot of custom indenting that is important, these more efficient tools might spoil your day (though at least #1 can be undone, so feel free to experiment with that).
Option #3 will take more time, but will preserve special cases. You just have to select around the special cases.
To prevent this problem from happening in the future, it is often good to use the [b]Edit/Paste and Match Style[/b] command instead of standard paste. This will make sure any incoming text conforms to your default formatting preferences. Do note it is contextual though. If you use that command off of a blockquote, or something that is bold, then all of the pasted text will be blockquote or bold. It doesn’t paste according to your defaults, but according to the text around the current caret position.
A lot of people just choose to defer cleaning things up until they have pasted everything in, and then use method #2 on all of the binder documents at once (select them in the Binder to fire off this command en masse), or rely on option #4 which lets you write without paying any attention to mundane page layout details.
Well to be clear about this, the fixed width option is purely a visual tool. It is for those who like a narrower presentation no matter how wide the actual window may be. It doesn’t in any way impact the underlying formatting (and in fact it can obscure issues with it in cases like this), and so won’t resolve the way the documents compile. My advice would be to leave that off until you get the text homogenous, leaving the editor wide so that manual right-indents can be easily spotted. Fixed width becomes much more useful once the text is primarily authored in Scrivener, or is known to be “clean”.
It’s a style issue, which is why it seems so finicky. Since styles are paragraph based, and at times character range based, this can mean some documents compile out just fine, and others act strange, or only strange in places.
Scrivener is doing exactly what you tell it to, dutifully setting a margin that is right where you put it, the problem is the word processor doesn’t know what to do with a hard margin setting that falls outside of the text box (+6.5”).
In that case the convert to default formatting tool will definitely save you lots of time! The best way to use it at this point would be to follow this annotated sequence:
Click on the Draft item in the Binder
Switch your view to Outliner mode if necessary, by clicking on the toolbar icon or pressing [b]Cmd-1[/b]
Click on any of the Outliner items, we just want to make sure the active focus is in the outliner
Press [b]Cmd-A[/b] to select all. You should see every chapter etc highlighted.
Press [b]Opt-RightArrow[/b]. This expands the outline down to the very bottom of the list. Now your entire Draft is visible, which was the whole purpose of this exercise.
Press [b]Cmd-A[/b] again to select every item
Invoke [b]Documents/Convert/Formatting to Default Text Style[/b]
You’ll get a warning about how the action cannot be undone, click Okay on that; after a moment everything should now be fixed.
Do note that if you format your chapter titles in a special way, you’ll want to avoid selecting the chapter folders themselves, or they’ll end up looking like normal text when you compile. The above will reset everything. If you are using embedded chapter titles, just make sure those are not selected in Step 6. After following the directions in step 6, you can Cmd-click to remove individual items from the current outliner selection.
You might have something that looks a bit like this, in that case:
[size=9]Chapter folders have been de-selected, leaving everything else selected[/size]
this is great–adding the screen shots to tech support is a big help. NOW when i cut and paste from elsewhere - will i have to re-do this type of thing or will it automatically revert to this format?
