Murphy’s Law says that when we went live with our Scrivener blog series, the folks over at Literature and Latte would release 3.0. And they did! But we’re ga-ga over the changes, so we’re not complaining too much. Today we’d like to share a few changes that we’ve noticed (and we’re sure we’ll find more) formatting with Scrivener 3.0. As with most things, change is change, but we think it’s for the better (mostly).
Back Matter joins Front Matter
We loved that we could change front matter in Scrivener 2.0 with a dropdown menu, but didn’t like that we had to select and unselect back matter. Happily, Scrivener has fixed that problem for us.
As you’ll see at the bottom of the right-most pane, you can add front matter from a drop-down menu, and also add back matter. Since we usually have multiple books in a single Scrivener file, we name the folders with the book name and format, just to make sure we’re using the right one. (Note: Our Kindle files and Smashwords files use two different front matters, but the same back matter).
Section Types Make Life Easier
One of the biggest complaints about Scrivener 2.0 was the lack of customization on scenes at the same level. So if you had two scenes with two different fonts, you had to manually adjust them. This was particularly bothersome in front and back matter. But now, Scrivener allows users to create project formats and specify different scene types per project. One thing to note is you have to create Section Types before you can assign them layouts (see our tutorial below).
To add a new section type, navigate to Project -> Project Settings, then add new section types. Please note, these are simply labels; you’ll have to set the layouts via the tutorial below.
Assigning Section Layouts to Section Types
As we said above, Section Types are merely labels. You’ve got to assign the layouts to the types, and it’s a little confusing the first few times you do it. So we’ve put together a tutorial to walk you through the process:
Want to know more about this topic? Need some help with formatting, editing, or even marketing? SGR-Pub offers a wide variety of services to help you make the most out of your self-publishing journey.
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