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: 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.

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.

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 a scene in two, see Organize chapters and scenes.

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.