Weird line breaks

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hi there. Brand new user here and have already found a problem. :frowning:

I created a text document and the word “self-made” was split to:

self-
made

If I delete the hyphen to “selfmade” the line break disappears, but I can’t even select the hyphen itself. If I try to highlight it, for example, it will not highlight. If I delete it entirely then everything wraps properly. If I keep typing it works fine, but that’s a long thing to retype. If I put it back then the line breaks again.

In fact, that entire paragraph doesn’t even wrap. The word spouse is

spous
e

In Evernote there is “remove formatting” and “simplify formatting”. Exactly how do I strip formatting completely and make it clean? Just as importantly, how do I set word wrapping? Are hyphens not recognized correctly? I don’t understand this at all.

I love the software, but none of this was mentioned in the tutorial (I did the whole thing, not the quick start) and I’m very confused. I’ve used all kinds of word processors (Word, OpenOffice, Google Docs, Evernote, etc.) and I’ve never had this problem before.

I’ve Googled all of my questions and I can only find answers to this on images, which isn’t the problem.

2

I’m not expert on what you asking about, but will try to assist. I may misunderstand what you are asking… or I may simply be wrong, wrong, wrong… If so, apologies. That said…

I’m not clear as to what you are describing.

Are you saying that if you attempt to type a new line containing only
self-made
you get
self-
made
or that if you type a longer chunk of text containing self-made you wind up with self-made getting split if it falls just so at the right side of edit window?

I’m unable to recreate the first. If that’s what is happening, I would wonder if Tools > Options > Corrections > Edit Substitutions has a hyphen related entry in it that is causing some substitution… or if you have some keyboard macro utility or such running that is modifying text as you type.

The second is behaviour that I would expect (I see the same behaviour in Word).

If you are wanting to use a non-breaking hyphen, I’m not sure if that is an option in the Windows version of Scrivener. Do a search of the forums (search field in upper right corner) on “breaking hyphen” to see discussions… all of which currently seem to occur in the Mac version forums. What you find there may apply to the Windows version. Non-breaking spaces are apparently supported.

As to a paragraph not wrapping and spouse getting split into spous and e, perhaps that paragraph has somehow been formatted as “preserve formatting”. That’s 15.4.5 in the manual. Format > Formatting > Preserve Formatting.

Or some unwanted/incompatible formatting was brought in if the text was imported or pasted in rather than typed. As far as removing from material already brought in, you might try Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style, discussed in 15.4 in the manual under Right Indents. As far as removing such when pasting, one possibility would be Edit > Paste And Match Style. Another possibility would be to paste first into Windows Notepad, then copy/paste from there into Scrivener.

Ultimately, Scrivener is not focused on exacting WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), but rather on flexible organization and writing, with exacting formatting deferred till the Compile stage and/or some other production tool (Adobe InDesign for example) or to the e-book device/app on which the work will be viewed and read (i.e. complex exacting formatting will not necessarily work or be honored on such).

3

Ah, thank you. I’ll bet the substitution thing is the answer. I’ll try it later on tonight.

My manual though isn’t working. When I press F1 or go to Help > Scrivener Manual nothing happens at all. I’ll make that a separate post though so others who also have this problem will find an answer.

Many thanks! I’ll let you know.