# Format your text

Write keeps formatting simple on purpose: you mark what the words mean—emphasis, a link, a line in another hand—and the page setup decides how it looks. This page covers the handful of things you'll use.

### The selection bar

Select a few words and a small bar appears just above them.

![Screenshot: the selection bar over some selected words](https://assets.authortools.net/help/screenshot-placeholder.png)
*Screenshot: a few words selected in a scene, with the selection bar above them showing bold, italic, Aa, link and Comment.*

- **B** — bold (Ctrl+B).
- ***I*** — italic (Ctrl+I).
- **Aa** — the *alternate face*: a second font for a sign, a note, a letter, a line the story says is in someone else's hand (Ctrl+Shift+F). Which font it is lives in the page setup.
- **Link** — adds a web address to the words (Ctrl+K). Click a linked word later to change or remove the link.
- **Comment** — leaves a note on the words for yourself or a collaborator (Ctrl+M). See [Review suggestions and comments](/link/63).

On a Mac, use Cmd wherever these say Ctrl.

### Paragraph styles

Most paragraphs are ordinary body text, indented as your page setup says. For the others, put the cursor in the paragraph (or select several) and open the **Paragraph** menu in the toolbar:

- **Body text** — the usual.
- **Centered** — *THE END*, a closing note, a short line set apart. Ctrl+Shift+E switches centering on and off.
- **Indented from the left** — a letter, a sign, a quotation.
- **Indented both sides** — set in on both edges.
- **Hanging indent** — the first line flush and the rest indented, for a list of characters or an appendix entry.

The same menu inserts a [text-message exchange](/link/38).

### Line breaks

Enter starts a new paragraph. **Shift+Enter** breaks the line without starting a new paragraph—for a poem, an address, the lines of a song.

### Scene breaks

You don't type these. Each scene is its own page in the editor, and the book prints your scene-break ornament between them. To break one scene in two, put the cursor where the second should begin and choose **Split the scene here** from the **Paragraph** menu (or press Ctrl+Shift+Enter); see [Organize chapters and scenes](/link/66).

### A stray line at the end of a chapter

Sometimes a chapter ends with one lonely line at the top of a page. The **Paragraph** menu has a fix under **Fit, for a stray line**: on a paragraph on the page before, choose **Tighten a line**, which sets its letters and spaces a hair closer so it may run one line shorter. Check in **Preview**; if it didn't quite do it, try another paragraph. **Loosen a line** does the opposite. The nudge is marked faintly in the margin of the editor and is invisible in the book.

### What about fonts and sizes?

There are none in the editor, and that's deliberate. The font, size, spacing and indents of the whole book are set once, in **Page setup**, so every chapter matches. See [Page setup: the basics](/link/54).