Apple’s expansion code only works at the character level. You could probably set up something in System Preferences/Languages and Text/Text that will do this for you, but it will be in the same font as the current paragraph.
A tool like Typinator or TextExpander would be best for using special fonts, as they can do rich text replacements. They are useful for many other things as well though, so it might be worth the cost.
Also, depending on the character you might be in luck. Many of the most common special characters can be accessed by holding down the Option or Option-Shift keys and pressing a certain letter. Getting at these is more difficult than it used to be. You have to visit the language preferences and turn on “Keyboard and Character Viewer” at the top of the list. Make sure the input menu is turned on at the bottom. Now in the menu bar status area, click on the flag and choose character viewer. This will display a fake keyboard and if you hold down the option and shift keys you’ll see the alternate characters available.
Tip of the Day: When typing keywords in the keywords pane of the inspector, after you start typing hit opt-Escape to bring up the list of keywords for auto-completion.
Tip of the Day: You can create folders at the root level alongside the Draft and Research folders - so you can add folders for “Characters”, “Locations”, etc.
Tip of the Day: You can drag documents from the binder to the editor header bar as another way of opening them.
Tip of the Day: Click on the triangle next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field to narrow down the search criteria.
Tip of the Day: File > Export > Files… exports selected files in the binder recreating the folder structure in the Finder.
Tip of the Day: Hover the mouse over documents in the binder to see the synopsis in a tooltip.
Tip of the Day: Opt-clicking on one of the checkbox columns in the Outliner will apply to all visible items (e.g. If you opt-click on the “Page Break Before” checkbox of a document in the outliner, if it was off and clicking on it turns it on, the checkbox will be set to ON for all visible items in the Outliner too).
Tip of the Day: While working in another application, you can use Scrivener’s services to send text to the currently open Scrivener project. (You will need to enable Scrivener services in the System Preferences in Snow Leopard. To do so, you go to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences, choose “Services”, and look for “Append to Current Text” and “Make New Clipping” under the “Text” section.)
Tip of the Day: To get a word and character count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; selection statistics appear at the bottom of the contextual menu.
Tip of the Day: To save your preferences to restore them later, use the “Manage…” pop-up button at the bottom of the Scrivener > Preferences… window.
Tip of the Day: To assign keywords to multiple documents at the same time, select the relevant documents and drag & drop the keywords onto one of them in the Binder from the Keywords HUD.
Tip of the Day: File > Backup Project To… allows you to create zipped-up backups of your project.
Tip of the Day: RTF is by far the best export format. To export with footnotes, images, headers and comments intact, choose RTF.
Tip of the Day: To split up text after importing, use Documents > Split at Selection (cmd-K) or Split with Selection as Title (opt-cmd-K).
Tip of the Day: Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To copy whole documents, use Documents > Duplicate (cmd-D). Or use Simple Duplicate (shift-cmd-D), which won’t copy subdocuments.
Tip of the Day: Remain calm. If you accidentally hit delete on a file, the file is not permanently deleted, just moved to Scrivener’s Trash folder.
Tip of the Day: To switch between project and document notes, click Document Notes in the Inspector. Project notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: If you want to give text highlight colours meaningful names for your project, use the panel found here Edit > Find > Find Highlight…
Tip of the Day: To change the colour of an annotation (Text > Annotation), click into the annotation and use Text > Font > Show Colors.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener Links (Text > Scrivener Link, or drag documents into text) allow you to make links between documents in a project. See our video literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html ‘References & Links’ for more information.
Tip of the Day: Holding the Option key down while dragging in the binder/outliner will disallow drop-ons, making dropping between documents easier.
Tip of the Day: View > Reveal in Binder (opt-cmd-R) will show where the current editor document is in the binder.
Tip of the Day: Documents > Convert allows you to convert PDF or web files into text files for editing (some formatting may be lost).
Tip of the Day: Opt-cmd-up/down arrow zooms in/out on text, PDF and web files.
Tip of the Day: If you do not want to include formatting when pasting text, just use Edit > Paste and Match Style (shift-opt-cmd-V).
Tip of the Day: Window > Zoom to Fit Screen (ctrl-cmd-=) stretches the window to fit the screen.
Tip of the Day: To highlight a PDF: View > Open in > External Editor to highlight the PDF in Preview/Acrobat/Skim. Switch from the PDF document and back to see the changes.
Tip of the Day: You can make Scrivener’s interface sparse by changing background colours to white, hiding the toolbar and header bars, closing the inspector, etc.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener supports MultiMarkdown (MMD). MMD is a simple mark-up syntax that can be converted into LaTeX and XHTML.
Tip of the Day: Control-clicking on the icon next to the project file name at the top centre of the header bar brings up the file path.
Tip of the Day: Take a snapshot of your document before you start editing for the day, hit cmd-5 or Documents > Snapshots > Take Snapshot, and you can return to your earlier version of the document at any time that you want.
Tip of the Day: Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels, font, colours, etc and use File > Save As Template… to use it as a base for new projects.
Tip of the Day: To save your preferences in order to restore them later, use the “Manage…” pop-up button at the bottom of the Scrivener > Preferences… window.
Tip of the Day: Text > Ghost Notes Mode (shift-cmd-X) fades out unselected annotations and footnotes. Great for making them less obtrusive.
Tip of the Day: Preference settings only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To alter line height, inter-line spacing and paragraph spacing of selected text go to Text > Spacing…
Tip of the Day: Make sure files have extensions before importing them into Scrivener, e.g. RTF. Scrivener uses the extension to determine the file type.
Tip of the Day: When the editor is split either horizontally or vertically, the pane that is active displays an underline in the document title of the relevant header bar.
Tip of the Day: To print your entire draft, go to File > Compile Draft… and click on the “Print…” button instead of “Export…”.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Find > Find Annotation… allows you to cycle through all annotations in a project.
Tip of the Day: The little arrow next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field allows you to change the search parameters.
Tip of the Day: You can set up full screen mode to look like an old-fashioned computer by playing with Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen. ‘Setting Up Your Writing Environment’ tutorial video available here literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: Project Targets allow you to set a word/character count target for the entire draft, and for each writing session. The ‘Targets’ video gives more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: If you would like to change the organisation of your Scrivener toolbar, go to View > Customize Toolbar…
Tip of the Day: To see where a project is saved, ctrl-click on the .scriv icon next to the project name at the very top of the window, above the toolbar line.
Tip of the Day: New documents use the current mode. If in script mode, new documents will use script mode. Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode or cmd-3 will switch between script and prose writing modes.
Tip of the Day: Folders and text files are much the same. To see the text of a folder, click on the corkboard icon. Please see ‘The Flexibility of Folders in Scrivener’ tutorial video literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html for more details.
Tip of the Day: Command-r (cmd-r) will quickly show or hide the ruler.
Tip of the Day: You can customise the separators that appear between texts in Edit Scrivenings via Preferences… > General.
Tip of the Day: You can get rid of the lines from index cards using Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors > Draw lines.
Tip of the Day: Entering <$p> in the header/footer field in File > Compile Draft… > Text Options will insert the page number in the compiled file.
Tip of the Day: You can insert images directly into the text by dragging or by using Edit > Insert > Image From File… Double-click on the image to resize.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in corkboard or outliner mode, use opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to work on multiple text documents as though they were one, even inside the Research folder.
Tip of the Day: If you prefer the Outliner to the Corkboard, go to Scrivener > Preferences… > Navigation tab to choose which mode gets opened by default.
Tip of the Day: To check for overused words, select the documents you want to check, enter Edit Scrivenings mode, and go to View > Statistics > Text Statistics. Click on the disclosure triangle next to “Word Frequency” to reveal the word frequency.
The Question:
Can you do this for an entire project at once, or do you have to go document by document? I have a 220,000 word book with sixty chapters.
As the tip says, you can use Edit Scrivenings to view as many documents together as you want. So just load up all your text in Edit Scrivenings before using the tool.
Make sure you have the editor focussed, not the Binder. It sounds like you created an Edit Scrivenings session, but the Binder is still active. Click anywhere in the text editor and try again.
The editor is covered in the “Getting Started > The Main Interface” section of the user manual. Briefly, it is the big part in the middle (if the Inspector is open; otherwise it is the big part on the right) that holds the text of your documents. It is where you type in words and edit what has already been written, hence, text editor. Make sure the blinking cursor is in the editor.
Okay, that’s what I thought, but it didn’t work, which is why I started searching on the term.
HOWEVER–I must have opened it, but not clicked in it. I would have sworn to you that I clicked in several files and never got the option for test stats–but this time when I did it, it worked. So clearly I was opening the various docs but not clicking IN them.
Once again, I thank you for your patience, both of you!
No problem, glad it’s working. The trick is that blinking cursor. If you don’t see it, for some reason you aren’t actually “in” the editor. A common mistake is clicking in the left or right margin padded area rather than directly on the text itself. The padding area is not technically in the editor, so your focus stays in the Binder.
Tip of the Day: To give highlight colours meaningful names (e.g. event related), use the panel from Edit > Find > Find Highlight… or press ctrl-cmd-H.
Tip of the Day: To get a word count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; the count appears at the bottom of the contextual menu. Plenty of count related information in our video on ‘Statistics’ literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: To assign a label or status to multiple documents, ctrl-click on the selected documents in the binder, corkboard or outliner.
Tip of the Day: Set up your own list of labels and status descriptions by going to File > Label & Status Setup… or by pressing alt-cmd-,
Tip of the Day: You can hide or show the header and footer bars in the editor pane(s) using View > Layout > Hide/Show Header/Footer View.
Tip of the Day: Hit cmd-. or opt-esc while typing to bring up the auto-complete list. Add auto-complete words to a Scrivener project via the Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List… menu item.
Tip of the Day: The two arrows (if activated - the icon goes blue when clicked) in the footer bar beneath the outliner and corkboard (when you are in the relevant mode) make the other editor (when opened) show the selected document. It is simple when you try!
Tip of the Day: Use the References pane in the Inspector (or press cmd-7) to create links to external files that you do not want to import into the project. You can see our ‘References & Links’ video for more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: You can give the corkboard a custom background image or a plain colour background via Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors tab > Corkboard background:
Tip of the Day: You can add additional columns in the Outliner view by clicking the 3 dots (…) at the right of the existing columns. The likes of ‘Word Count’ and ‘Target’ information are then only a further click away.
Tip of the Day: To exit a search, either click on the ‘X’ at the right of search term field, or the ‘X’ in the footer bar of the binder.
Tip of the Day: The Formatting tab in File > Compile Draft… lets you choose how the text of your exported manuscript should appear. It doesn’t have to look anything like it does in Scrivener’s editor, if you do not want it to.
Tip of the Day: To make individual documents retain their format when using File > Compile Draft… (e.g. title pages), check Preserve Formatting in the Inspector.
Tip of the Day: Create custom project templates by setting up a bare bones project with settings you want and using File > Save As Template…
Tip of the Day: Switch between project and document notes by clicking on the Notes tab in the Inspector, then clicking on Document Notes. Project Notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: Going to View > Customize Toolbar… provides a way for you to drag your favourite items to (or default reset) the toolbar.
Tip of the Day: Do not worry about the size of a Scrivener project in terms of disk space, or how many files you can put into it.
Tip of the Day: The default save location for Scrivener projects is your Documents folder. Cmd-click on the title bar (top of window) to see a file’s location.
Tip of the Day: Setting up Compile Draft correctly will allow you to print out a list of all the titles in your draft, including any synopsis or notes you may wish to include. literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … d_draft.3F
Tip of the Day: Do not be concerned with proprietary formats. You should always (for the foreseeable future) be able to get your writing out of Scrivener using an RTF or HTML export.
