Simple instructions for hierarchical organisation and links (just like the User Manual!)

Scrivener Newcomer Central
1

New to Scrivener.

I would like to quickly learn to create a document which is just like the User Manual - in which there are:

  1. Hierarchically-organised chapters/sections (1, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.2.1, etc.)
  2. With chapter/section titles (1 Chapter 1: Introduction, 1.1 Background 1.2 Overview of previous research, etc.)
  3. Where hyperlinks appear as references to the section number only (see Section 1.1.2 for details)
  4. Figures and tables that act the same way (caption: “Figure 1.1 - Illustration of BlahBlahBlah”; in-line reference: “see Figure 1.1”).
  5. Footnotes
  6. Hyperlinked bibliographical references

It seems to me that these things are so basic to academic writing that there should be a one-stop resource that outlines a simple way to achieve these things, but so far I’ve either been coming up with partial bits here and there, threads from 12 years ago that reference information quite different from the current version’s setup, and/or extremely long discussions mostly about other things in which this information seems at best hidden.

Could it perhaps be possible to release the User Manual in a .scriv file, so that it could be used as a template? Perhaps that already exists somewhere?

Thanks for any assistance.

2

On this page https://www.literatureandlatte.com/learn-and-support/user-guides there is an option to download a Mac scriv format version it seems. I have not tested it.

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3

Thanks, I hadn’t noticed that (on my machine, it was necessary to scroll down within the drop-down).

But I also noticed that the Manual was at least part-written in MultiMarkDown, which I’m not currently in the mood to learn - so I’m still looking for a simple Scrivener-based tutorial that will quickly get new users up to speed with these basic features of academic writing!

Thanks again

4

The Scrivener Manual is a very complex document. I wouldn’t recommend diving into it as a beginner. If you haven’t already, review the Tutorials available from the Help menu in Scrivener. There are also a plethora of great books available:

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/learn-and-support/books

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5

If you want a document “just like the user manual,” you will need to use Markdown and LaTeX, because that’s what the manual does. If you expect to do a lot of academic writing, that may be the most efficient approach in the long run. Scrivener does not claim to be a one-stop solution for complex formatting tasks, and the manual does things that Scrivener alone cannot.

To your specific questions, though:

  • Hierarchical numbering is accomplished via numbering placeholders in the Compile command. There’s a complete list of available placeholders on the Help menu. The Compile command itself is discussed in detail in Chapters 23 and 24 of the manual.

  • Chapter/Section titles are most easily defined via the Binder, which you would also use to define the hierarchy you want.

  • Questions 3 and 4 are again handled through placeholders; probably using LaTeX’s tools for these will be easier for a large project.

  • Footnotes are easy to insert, either inline or via the inspector, or both. Output is controlled by the Compile command.

  • What do you mean by hyperlinked references? If you want a link in the body of a footnote (or anywhere else in the text), just put it there.

Edit: Probably you can also accomplish all this via a Scrivener → Word workflow. In that event, the easiest solution would be to use Styles for the various elements and let Word’s very capable Style tools take it from there.

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