I’ve been applying italics manually to words in my manuscript but I’ve learned from e-book producers that the proper way to do this would be to use character STYLES instead. This makes perfect sense. Problem is, Although Scrivener allows me to search for italicised characters or words in a project or a file, I’m then unable to replace the formatting with the actual style.
What might I be missing, or is there a script or workaround?
Thanks, Don.
EDIT: this is the process for the Mac V3. Not sure whether it’s been implemented yet on the Windows Beta, but presumably it will eventually work the same way. Sorry if I’ve confused matters…
Set up your character style first (eg Emphasis). Then go to some text with the standard Italics, and select it, then bring up the Styles Panel (Ctl-s on the Mac) and click on the gear and choose Select Similar Formatting.
All the text in italics will be highlighted and you can apply the style to them all at once.
Test this first in one document just to make sure there are no side-effects (it’s reversible with ctl-z, (cmd-z on the Mac) but always worth a test run…), but there should be no problems. When you’re happy, create a scrivening of the whole document and do it for real.
HTH.
Brookter, good suggestion but unfortunately I’ve still got a problem. Here’s the deal.
I’m able to find the "select similar formatting choice (On the Windows version instead of a gear icon it’s just the standard …)
Problem arises because the PARAGRAPH style is already set ( I named it “narrator.”) I happened to manually create the italics on a single word. Consequently when I ask to select similar formatting, Scrivener assumes the formatting is the PARAGRAPH style, rather than the manually coded italics. Consequently, every paragraph in the document using the “narrator” style is then selected when I hoped only the words I’ve italicised would be highlighted. Scrivener’s intentions are clear, I only wish it would be more granular in my case…
Make sense?
Don.
I see. Fair enough.
The next (more manual, sadly) solution is to use Find by Formatting and choose the option Character Format and the Italic button (clearing the others).
That will take you to the first italic (and it ignores the styles), press the shortcut key you’ve assigned to the Emphasis Character Style (worth assigning one just for this exercise if you haven’t already…), then Find Next Formatting (cmd-opt-shift-g) and rinse and repeat.
If you’ve got Keyboard Maestro you can automate this further, of course.
HTH.
Thanks, Brookter.
I feared it would come down to this. I’ll look into keyboard maestro. Once upon a time among Word geeks I was the macro king. Gotta keep up.
I’d heartily recommend looking into Keyboard Maestro anyway — for me it’s an essential part of using a Mac (I’m only a happy user, not affiliated with the program).
For your scenario, you’d be able to write a repeating macro which would do every substitution in a one-off single command — whether it would be worth doing that depends on how many substitutions you have to make of course.
I use KM an awful lot with Scrivener and DevonThink — main use is collating scripts and commands together into ‘palettes’ (pop-up menus). I have nine of them for Scrivener alone — for Collections, Keywords, Layouts, Styles etc. E.g. this is the Styles palette:
It’s invoked with opt-s, the the hotkey to choose a function. I use this palette mainly for the easy bullet and list and miscellaneous format commands, but other palettes can invoke more complex macros (eg creating new journal entries with the date already filled in and some boiler plate text added). I also duplicate some default Scrivener shortcuts when I think it’s useful (e.g. the Collections palette has all the collections commands for hiding / showing / navigating in a persistent palette for easy use).
Some of this could be done using System Preferences, of course, but I generally never use the Mac’s default keyboard shortcut remapping any more because it’s a pain having to redo them on both my computers. Instead, they’re all in Keyboard Maestro synced via Dropbox — so I only ever have to create a macro / shortcut once. It’s the second program I install on a new system (Dropbox being the first).
If you’re used to Word macros, then I think you’ll like KM…
