I’m having a horrible time with the ruler and margin settings.
Why are there a 9 tab stops in my default (short story) document? Can I delete them without repercussions? Can I change the default?
When I drag the indent arrows, they jump. Say I move the right one in to 7, then it suddenly jumps out to the furthest right it could be. Why is it doing that? It happens with the left ones, too.
Also, now the greyed out area on the left and right of the indents is gone. Can I bring them back? Make them bigger? I like having wide margins when I write and don’t enjoy the words going all the way to the edge.
I don’t understand the logic about ruler conversions, especially with factoring in the little grey areas. Could anyone please help explain how to set them to export to a Word doc with 1" margins?
go to Formats > Tabs and Indents > and will see and indent Panel and can set paragraph indents with numbers. and tabs. In general don’t use tab stops as they tend to mess up editors and compiling.
Remember when get ready to print then can set margins for printing via File > Page setup where you can set margins. Who cares about the editor, that is for your viewing pleasure. If want the editor narrow, then go to options > appearance >Main Editor and adjust editor width and use a fixed width editor.
In the compiler, double click the compile format to open it to edit(change settings) and make sure output is for Docx and see image below to set margins for compile if want different than the Project page setup.
Thank you @GoalieDad! I didn’t realize I could change the margins when compiling or that the stops can mess up editors.
When I exported it, the margins were great, but every indent for new paragraphs or dialogue was pretty far in. Do you know how to adjust that?
Not a huge thing, more a curiosity, but when I changed the values in Tabs and Indents, they still sometimes jump around (ex. Right: 7.15in jumps out the border). Any idea why it does that?
One make sure the ruler is visible View > Text Editing > Ruler and then look at your indent. You can adjust by Formats > Tabs and Indents as I said above, but I do it by Project > Project settings and go to Formatting pane and adjust the indent to what I want. Industry standard .25 If slide indent will have numbers displayed but can see that .25 is to first marker on the ruler. (see Image below). Once set the margin and have font, font size, line spacing etc you want set as your default format in the Panel below.
For older documents select documents with the old formatting (above only applies going forward) and use menu command Documents > Convert > Text to default formatting and that should solve your problem.
I actually pick a document and adjust formatting there including indents and in the Panel above check to make sure the settings are right and Click Use Current and then Make Default.
Although I’m a Mac user, I’m going to come in here.
If you use Project Settings > Formatting what you set there only affects the project in question. Your Scrivener-wide defaults for all new projects must be set in File > Options > Editing > Formatting (on Windows; for any Mac-users who stumble on this, it’s Scrivener > Settings > Editor > Formatting).
The Make Default button in the Screenshot does not make the settings the Scrivener-wide default, it refers to the choice of Footnote marker, making that the default going forward for all projects; in my experience existing footnotes made by highlighting the anchor word will not be changed to use the marker. I don’t know if Windows differs from Mac in that.
That setting will probably become 8.15in once put into a page with typical margins (and thus almost surely not what you really want). That said, there is a behaviour where dragging the right indent past a certain point will essentially disable it, allowing text to flow as wide as the editor (or the fixed width setting within it).
It’s important to keep in mind that Scrivener is primarily a writing tool rather than a layout oriented tool—and it sounds like you’re trying to force it more into the latter way of working. It’s going to do some things differently that here and there because it isn’t trying to make a page while you write. It’s going to let you have 25in wide lines of text if you really want them that way, and overall it is best to have the right indent off 99% of the time so that text will flow with whatever page size you compile the text into.
Also, now the greyed out area on the left and right of the indents is gone. Can I bring them back? Make them bigger? I like having wide margins when I write and don’t enjoy the words going all the way to the edge.
So with that all in mind, the best way to do this is to adjust how the editor looks, rather than trying to force the issue with raw formatting (like you would in a layout-oriented tool such as Word). Go into the Appearance: Main Editor options tab.
The editor margins setting at the bottom here will add a cosmetic amount of space around the text itself. This space is added even if the window is narrower than the fixed width amount, above. So for tweaking that, I recommend making the editor split narrower even than you might normally prefer it, just so you can more easily see what you’re doing with the settings.
Now make the editor split as wide as possible. You should see a point where the text stops wrapping. This is the fixed width that is referred to in the setting above. The easiest way to set this to your preferred comfort zone is to shrink the editor down to where line lengths are comfortable, and then click the Use Current button. Now if you expand the window back out, it will stay that width.
Note that “Page View” is another beast entirely. I don’t recommend using it unless you really need to, or strongly prefer that cosmetic approach. Changing how the text looks in that is naturally more a factor of the paper and print settings. The downsides to it are that on Windows you won’t be able to use Scrivenings view to edit more than one chunk of text at a time, and on both platforms it is more difficult to split the editor vertically without a large enough screen to show both full pages at a time (at least not without a bunch of annoying horizontal scrolling). Fixed width on the other hand, as you’ve observed, will only dictate the maximum line length, and allow lines to wrap at whatever width the editor is set to otherwise.
Ahhh, okay. Your explaination @AmberV makes a ton of sense. I’m still trying to find the balance of what Scrivener can do that I’m not aware of and what it’s limitations are.
I’m still having compiling indent issues though.
In the editor and in File → Options → Editing → Formatting, I have the indent at .25, but when I compile to Word it’s giving it a .5 indent.
That’s most likely what your compile format is doing. If you are using the Manuscript-Times format (which it looks to be), then it will be applying “industry standard” half-inch indents, double-spacing the lines, 12pt TNR, etc.
Again this comes back to how Scrivener is more in the writing tool arena, where the way things look while you write can look nothing at all like what you compile to. You don’t have to use indents if you don’t want to, you can use paragraph spacing instead (like how paragraphs are shown here in the forum).
Thus if you really want 1/4in indents in your manuscript (as opposed to what looks best to your eye), the correct place to make that change is in your compile settings:
Open File ▸ Compile...
Scroll through the middle preview column and locate where body text is printed.
Double-click on the preview tile to edit this Layout.
You should be able to take it from there, as that will take you to the Section Layout pane, with the correct Layout selected, and the way to adjust the formatting is with stuff you’re used to using.
You might need to adjust a few other Layouts as well, especially any that are bold face in the list (which means elements of your draft are using them), that also print text.
And now, like I say, you could have 18pt Verdana in your editor, with no indents, and regular line spacing, and it won’t matter—you’ll still get what you need when you compile.
