Table of Authorities

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

First, Scrivener is amazing. I just figured out how to make a table of contents, and its really thrilling.

Next, I have a question. I am writing a long legal document, and have to make a table of authorities. (It’s basically an index of the cases and statutes that I use in my argument). I’ve been trying to figure out if Scrivener can do this by hand, much like it does with the table of contents. What I’m looking to do is write my document, and then have basically a list that would identify the name of the cases I discuss and the pages of my document I discuss them on. It might look like this:
U.S. v. Gates . . . . . . . . . 3, 5, 6, 9

There is a way in word to do this if I compiled it first, but since I like Scrivener better I figured I might see if there is a way I could do it in here.
Thanks!!

2

This depends - you can only create page number references for the tops of documents. So if you discuss a case in a document in the binder, and that document spans several pages, you can only refer to the first page, if you see what I mean.

If that’s enough for what you want, and as long as you are compiling for PDF or RTF/DOC, then you can refer to page numbers in much the same way as the table of contents works, yes (in fact the Copy as Linked ToC feature just provides a quick way of doing this for tables of content):

  1. Type <$p> where you want the page number to appear.

  2. Select the “<$p>” and then ctrl-click on it and select “Scrivener Link”.

  3. From the Scrivener Link menu, navigate to the document to which you wish to refer and select it.

This will leave you with a linked “<$p>” which, when clicked on, will open the document you linked do. Upon Compile, the “<$p>” will be replaced with the page on which the linked document begins.

Hope that helps.

All the best,
Keith

3

Thanks for the suggestion. I need to be more page specific than you’ve described, and since I need to compile it to be Word compatible for distribution anyway, I’ll handle it inside Word.
Maybe something to think about for new features - a comprehensive index feature would be so useful for non-fiction writing especially!