Welcome back.
This is the last post on Scrivener for a while. I’m going to be moving on to a few other tech/writing topics next. I use Scrivener all the time so I’m sure I’ll be returning to it again at some stage. And if you’ve got any questions, ask away. I can always click on the delete comment button for those particularly tricky problems.
Your kidding.
Yes, I’m kidding. Would it help if I underlined the sarcastic bits?
Why would underlining help? I get these blogs through a psychic connection.
Really?
*grins* Would it help if I underlined the sarcastic bits?
Touché … But it does bring to mind a point about an underlining problem I used to have.
Hey, this is a public blog, we don’t want to know about your underlining!
No, underlining; the line drawn underneath your characters.
My characters? My characters don’t have lines drawn under them. They’re on this spaceship, see-
Yeah, right, I remember, but what I’m talking about is Scrivener’s habit of changing italics into underlined text.
Hey, I have that problem.
Well, there’s an option under Compile / Text Options that might help.
Hey, you’re right, that’s better.
Glad to be of service.
I’ve got a another question for you. Sometimes, when I’m editing a Text Section, the Binder has a different section highlighted. Is that a bug?
You mean something like this …
Exactly, the Binder says “The Mathematician Cryptographer” but the editor shows “Route March.” What happened?
When you click on a section in the binder, the binder highlights that section and displays it in the editor. However, if you use the forward and backward arrows (below) the binder does not update its highlight.
The same thing happens if you use the Edit / Go To option (below).
Quite why the Binder doesn’t update when you use these options, I don’t know. However, its always worked like this and I guess the nice guy down their in Truro intended it to be so.
Intended it to be so? You been reading a lot of Victorian stuff lately?
No, and I’m not going to get off track here.
So, why did he intend it to be so, squire?
Because there is a command to force the binder to sync up with whats being displayed in the editor. It’s called “Reveal In Binder”.
That funny combination of hieroglyphics next to the command means the keyboard shortcut (on the mac) is option-command-R.
And talking of binder, that’s what you’ll be in if you don’t drop this “squire” thing.
‘kay. So what’s next sqqqqqqqqq … oh, squirrel.
Ha, ha. While were talking about the Binder, ere’s something I find useful. If you’re going to revise with a section, its useful to take a copy before you start. If it doesn’t work out you can always revert to the original or you can use it for reference.
Scrivener has versioning built in, but I find it simpler to duplicate the text section I’m going to edit then delete the duplicate when I’m done. This is easily done by right clicking on the original text section in the binder and choosing Duplicate.
Hum, duplicating text? Not exactly earth shattering, is it?
Hey, this is writing software, we’re not uncovering the meaning of life here. But here is something a little more unusual.
If you select a text section you can get a set of statistics with the Project / Text Statistics command.
Cool. So this is going to show me my probability of reaching the top of the NY Times bestsellers list, right?
Wrong, I’m sorry to say. In fact, I’m really sorry to say that, that would be a great improvement. In fact, I might just see if that guy in Truro is up for a bit of a challenge in the stats department.
In the meantime we’ll have to put up with what’s currently on offer. Text Statistics shows a distribution of your word use. For example
Boy, you really like “the.”
Noticed that, huh. It’s a bit of a habit.
When the stats are displayed you have to click on the “frequency” heading to get them sorted by, well, frequency. That makes more sense to me, but I guess if you’r name is Spock, alphabetical might be better.
I wouldn’t go throwing anything away on the basis of this dialog box, but it can give you a broad indication. I find it most useful to look for unusual words that you’ve used several times. Perfunctory is a perfectly good word, but use it a dozen times in a chapter and your readers are going to get tired of it.
Gotcha. At least that’s a bit more exciting than duplicating text.
Ok. While I’m on a roll in the thrills department, here’s the last one.
Speech.
Speech? You mean Scrivener can help me write a speech? Like an acceptance speech, for, like, maybe, say, a Pulitzer?
I’m sure it can help with that, if it comes to it.
When.
I don’t know.
No, I mean, when, when it comes to it. I like to live in hope.
Right, I’ll join you with that one. I’ve got a space on my shelves ready and waiting.
You too?
Ah, great minds. But what I really meant was that Scrivener (on the mac) can use the mac’s speech capabilities to read your work back to you.
Place your cursor at the start of a text section, choose the Start Speaking menu option and sit and listen. The default voice isn’t too bad and its really useful because it reads exactly what you’ve written, removing the bias of what your memory believes you wrote.
I’ve got to give this a go. *clicking* Hey, it works. Great.
Yada … yada … yada …
Er … I set it off at the start of my 30k, its got 29,437 words to go … how do I stop it?
What do you think, reader?
Shall we tell him, or let him listen to his masterpiece?
And do you have any Scrivener tips?
Or Scrivener gripes?
Let us know and maybe there’ll be a be another oversized Scrivener trilogy.
Cheers!
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Don’t worry about me *yawns* … just 26,498 words to go …
I like the statistics thing, it’s very useful (that is when I use Scrivener…:D ).
And I’m really glad about the speech thing, that means I’m not going to loose my voice anymore when Reading Out Loud. What a great technique, the Reading Out Loud I mean. I love it. It catches mistakes, which can’t be seen when reading. You made me happy Nigel. (Hope it works on windows version too…)
Thank you very much for another great lesson 🙂
Hi Irene
I’m not sure if the windows version will have the speech capability because Scrivener is using the speech capability built into the mac OS to provide this feature. I don’t have a windows machine to try it out at the moment. Maybe I should borrow one to find out such things…
Thanks for the comments.
Cheers!
It doesn’t :((( I was soooo disappointed to find out. I hope they’ll include it in the final version. Snif. Very disappointed.
Why are you using Scrivener – presumably as a writer? – if you can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”, “were” and “we’re”, “there” and “their”, etc.?!
You got great points there, that’s why I always love checking out your blog.
My blog:
credit rachat credit et pret rachat de credit
Wow! thanks Aubrie. If I’m ever in need of an unsolicited loan, in a foreign currency from a bank that thinks spam is a great way of marketing, then you will be the first people on my list. In the meantime, I’m going to put you on a completely different list 🙂
I’m tinkering around with the duplicate option myself [new to scrivener] but I’m do scared to hit the button in case I do something irrevocable. Thanks for the tips.
Hi Maddy. Yes, the duplicate feature is brilliant. You can just duplicate a section, edit away, and if you mess up your changes, go back to the original. Scrivener is filled with thoughtful features because its made by someone who actually does write. I haven’t posted anything on Scrivener for a long time. Maybe I’ll do some more.
Thanks for the comment.
Cheers!
Hello Nigel, I don’t know if you’re still checking this blog but I have a Scrivener question. I accidentally activated a small onscreen microphone that allowed me to say something that was then converted to text. I pressed some keys but I don’t remember which ones. This speech to text function is not mentioned anywhere that I can find in the Scrivener manual. Do you know how I can access it, it would be great to use when my fingers get tired of typing.
Many thanks, Chris
Hi Chris.
Yes, this is and old post, but I still blog and check comments.
I suspect you were using the OS X dictation system. It’s activated by double pressing the Fn key. You can terminate a phrase in the same way.
Dictation can be use to dictate (duh) into any Mac app, it’s not restricted to Scrivener.
Actually, I’m going to start a few more scrivener posts in the near future.
Hope this helps.
BRW, what do you write?
Cheers!
Thank you for replying, Nigel, yes I finally figured out what was happening. I like this OS X dictation function, it’s very handy. I am finishing up a doctoral thesis in the area of contemporary dance, for which Scrivener has been a godsend – such a powerful writing programme, I love and have become very attached it.
Chris
Cool. I love Scrivener, I’ve been using it for years, but I only write novels. When I did write my doctoral thesis I had to do it by hand! I had a lot of graphs, which were also hand drawn. Looks archaic these days! Best of luck finishing your degree.
Cheers!
hey Nigel – Scrivener Guru – one more question for you, does Scrivener have a format painter like MS Word? That would be useful. I can’t find one.
Cheers – Chris
Yes! Under Format -> Formatting, there are copy and paste formatting commands (which is way too many “format”s in one sentence for me!). The keyboard commands are crtl-option-cmd-C and -V. This will copy and paste the ruler settings as well as font settings.
If you just want to copy/paste the fonts, look under Format -> Font, or use option-cmd-C and -V).
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
… another question that I could ask you though, Scrivener has a Find function, but does it do Find and Replace?
cheers
Chris
There are a few places find and replace appears.
To find something in a single text file, cmd-F, or Edit -> Find -> Find … will bring up a find and replace box.
In the toolbar there is a project-wide find box on the right hand side (titles “Search”), but this only allows you to find something. However, Edit -> Find -> Project Replace … will bring up a project-wide find and replace. Confusingly it calls the find target “Replace” and the replacement text “With.” It kind of makes sense I suppose, but sticking with tradition would have been easier!
If you do use the toolbar Search box, when you click on one of the files it brings up, cmd-G will cycle you through the matches. cmd-G just means find the last search text.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
thank you, this information is exactly what I was looking for. And thanks for the thesis completion best wishes.
All the best
Chris
Many thanks for this tip which I just found by Googling. The ways in which Find in Scrivener works ( or seems not to) continue to confuse me and your comment here helped make things clearer.
Best regards
Alan
Hi Alan – glad it helped!
Why are you using Scrivener – presumably as a writer? – if you can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”, “were” and “we’re”, “there” and “their”, etc.?!
Hallo!
Thankyou for all the useful tips regarding using Scrivener. Can you explain please how to write numbered footnotes that appear at the end of a page in an academic document in scrivener. Many thanks Ros
Hi Ros. Support for footnotes (or the lack of) is a frustrating part of Scrivener. Fortunately for me, writing fiction, I’ve never been bothered by it.
To generate numbered footnotes at the end of the page where the footnote is referenced:
Click: Compile
Select “All Options”
Click: Print Settings
Change Layout type to Proofing (not publishing).
Click: Footnotes and comments, and choose what numbering style you’d like with the footnote format drop down box.
Then compile into whatever format you like.
I checked this with PDF and docx export formats and it worked fine.
As far as I can tell “Proofing,” as opposed to “Publishing,” simply limits the number of fonts you can select. Though in my test cases the output was no different with either option.
Hope this help, and good luck paper 🙂
Cheers!
Do I have to export the document into Word before I can see these. When I tried to do this the footnotes were not numbered.
Thanks for your help.