I get asked a lot about how to adjust the font, spacing, indents, and margins of a manuscript when working in Scrivener, especially from those who are importing or pasting in text from outside sources.
Whatever you do, don’t manually change the look of each new document as you create or import it. That’s the hard way!
In this post, I’ll show you the easy way to get your manuscript looking the way you want it. But, keep in mind that Scrivener was conceived as drafting software. This means that how it looks in the Editor (the space where you write the manuscript) doesn’t matter much because you can change it all when you compile, making it look different depending on the type of file you’re producing—e.g., EPUB, PDF for print on demand, or Word documents for submission.
Still, you probably have preferences for how the text looks while you’re writing. And, luckily, if you don’t like the default settings, you can easily change them and get back to writing.
I’ll also show you how to convert any existing documents that you wrote, imported, or pasted in so they match.
IMPORTANT: I highly recommend you do not use Tabs for indents, or extra paragraph returns to create paragraph spacing. Your output will look better and be more flexible later (e.g., allow you to adjust or remove indents) if you set up indents and after-paragraph spacing to prevent this temptation. If you already started writing with tabs and extra paragraph returns, you can use options under Edit>Text Tidying to strip them out, or use this article to get rid of them via Project Replace.
Okay, let’s start by creating your new global default that will apply to all new documents in all projects on the same computer.
Setting the Default Format for New Documents
The following steps will let you set the standard for all new documents in all projects on a specific computer, but will not change existing documents (we’ll look at how to apply it to existing files in a minute).
- Go to Scrivener>Settings (Mac) or File>Options (Windows). NOTE: On older versions of MacOS, Settings is called Preferences.
- Click the Editing button at the top.
- Select the Formatting tab at the top (see images below).
- Click in the small editor section, and use the format bar to adjust how your new documents will look.
- Adjust the first-line indent using the small bar (Mac) or downward-pointing arrow (Windows).
- Change the after-paragraph spacing by clicking the line spacing dropdown menu (button showing 1.1 or 1.0 in the images below) and choosing Other.
- Close the Settings/Options window.
TIP: To make this even faster, if you already have a document with text set up the way you want it (to include indents, line spacing, paragraph spacing, and font), click in that text before following the steps above. Then in step 3, simply click the “Use Formatting in Current Editor” button.
Cool, right? But what about your existing documents, or files you imported that don’t match? No worries, you can fix them too. Happily, this step will change the format without affecting character-level formatting like italic, bold, and underline. (A great alternative to Paste and Match Style, which I’ll cover in a minute.)
Applying Default Formatting to Existing Documents
Use the following steps to convert existing documents to the default formatting.
- Select the desired file in the Binder.
- Click in the text of the document in the Editor pane.
- Go to Documents>Convert>Text to Default Formatting. A small window appears, as shown below.
- Leave all boxes unchecked in order to convert all aspects of the format, and click OK.
The selected document is converted to the standard format you set in the previous section.
TIP: The one thing Scrivener doesn’t seem to change when you convert is background color—especially when pasting from a web page. To get rid of white or other colors that are only behind the text, select the affected text and go to Format>Highlight>Remove Color.
Pasting Text to Match the Existing Format
If you’re not worried about losing character formatting like italics and underlines, you can paste in text and so that it matches the existing document’s format by using Edit>Paste and Match Style.
Keep in mind this doesn’t use the default formatting, it simply matches the format of the document where you’re pasting it.
NOTE: This function can have the same issue with background colors—and has the same solution—I mentioned in the “tip” above.
In addition to setting a global default format, you can set up a project-specific format that overrides the global format. This is useful if you have one project that you want to look different from the others for some reason.
Setting the Default Text Format for a Single Project
- Go to Project>Project Settings>Formatting.
- Select the checkbox that reads “Use different default formatting for new documents in this project.”
- To use the settings in the current document, click Use Current. Otherwise, make changes in the Editor pane using the format bar that's provided.
- Click OK.
CAUTION: The project default format you just created will be used for all new documents and any that you convert to default formatting, only in this project. People often forget they’ve done this when they’ve been away from a project for a while. Project formatting always overrides the global setting, so if a project’s formatting won’t convert to the global default, check that it doesn’t have project formatting set up.
Working with Styles
Scrivener also has styles that allow you to differentiate the format of specific lines of text from the main body (which uses No Style). So if you want special formatting for things like quotes, letters, emails, or text messages, you can create and apply a style to it and the format will be kept exactly as it is in the Editor when you compile.
For more on Styles, see this post.
That said, if you simply want to keep the format of a section of text when you compile—like a title page or copyright page—without using a style, Preserve Formatting gets the job done.
Preserving the Formatting of a Section of Text
Preserve Formatting will protect the font, spacing, font size, indents, and alignment of the text to which it’s applied. Here’s how.
- Select the desired text to preserve.
- Go to Format>Preserve Formatting.
The selected text is surrounded by a dashed line and highlighted in pale blue to show that it is preserved. Remove preserved formatting with the same procedure.
Want more help? Check out more of my Scrivener articles. If you found something useful here, please consider contributing to my tea and chocolate fund. 🙂 Thanks!