How to Create, Edit, and Import Scrivener Styles on Mac and Windows

Styles let you format your writing with presets that combine settings for the font face, size, and color; line spacing; paragraph settings such as alignment and tabs; and more. In Customize the Scrivener Editor 3 – Use Styles to Format Your Scrivener Projects , we looked at how you can use Scrivener’s existing styles to easily format your project.

In this article, we explain how you can edit Scrivener’s existing styles, create your own, and import styles from other Scrivener projects.

Two types of styles: character styles and paragraph styles

Scrivener has two types of styles: character styles and paragraph styles. You use character styles to format words and phrases, and you use paragraph styles to format entire paragraphs, which could be body text, headings, lists, or other types of text.

Character styles include settings for a font, its size, its weight (bold, italic, etc.), and any specific adjustments such as kerning. Paragraph styles can include the above, but can also include alignment, whether the paragraph indents on the first line, any tab stops used, line spacing, and more.

Scrivener projects include a number of default styles. You can view these in a number of ways, as explained in the previous article.

Create a new style

To create a new style, format some text the way you want, select the text, then choose Format > Style > New Style from Selection. In the example below, I’ve increased the size of the body text from 12 to 13 points and created a body text style. Note that Scrivener’s default body text style is called No Style. This corresponds to the defaults you’ve set in the app’s settings or options, as explained in Customize the Scrivener Editor 2 – Adjusting Fonts in the Editor.

The New Style dialog offers a number of options:

• Name the style so you can choose it later from one of the Styles menus or the Style panel.
• Choose a keyboard shortcut, if you want; several options are available from the Shortcut menu.
• In the Formatting menu, choose whether you want this to be a character style or a paragraph style. If you leave the default, Save All Formatting, Scrivener saves both character and paragraph formatting.
• Check or uncheck Include Font Family and Include Font Size. For paragraph styles, you may not want to include these.
• You can tell Scrivener to draw a highlight box around the text, which makes the text stand out. Click the color well to choose the highlight color.
• Choose the next style that applies when you press Return after you’ve typed text with the style. By default, this is None, which means that the text will revert to the default formatting that you set in Scrivener’s Settings or Options. If you choose This Style, Scrivener continues to apply the new style until you choose another one. If the style you create is for body text, you usually want the same style to apply when you press Return. However, if you create a heading style, you probably want a body text style, or your default settings, to apply after you press Return.

Modify an existing style

Styles are independent of the text they apply to. If you change the definition of a style in your project, all the text using that style changes accordingly.

You can modify a style by formatting some text, just as you would to create a new style, selecting it, then choosing Format > Style > Redefine Style from Selection. Choose the style to redefine from the submenu. You have the same options as when you create a new style.

When you modify an existing style, Scrivener reformats all the text in your project where you have applied that style, and you can use this modified style going forward.

Delete styles

You may no longer want to use styles you’ve created and want to clean up the Styles menu. To delete a style, choose Format > Style > Delete Style, then choose a style from the submenu.

You can also delete a style from the Styles panel if it is visible. To display the Styles panel, choose Format > Style > Show Styles Panel, or press Control-S on Mac or Alt+S on Windows. Right-click a style in the Styles panel, then choose Delete Paragraph Style or Delete Character Style.

If you delete a style, text formatted with that style won’t change; you just won’t be able to apply the style’s combination of settings again. You can always recreate the style by selecting some of that formatted text and choosing Format > Style > New Style from Selection, as explained above.

Import styles from another Scrivener project

If you create or modify styles in one Scrivener project, you may want to use them in other projects. To do this, choose Format > Styles > Import Styles; Scrivener asks you to select a project to import styles from.

If the project you choose contains styles that have the same name but different formatting than those in the current project, Scrivener asks you what to do.

• If you choose Keep Existing Styles, Scrivener only imports new styles.
• If you choose Replace Existing Styles, Scrivener replaces existing styles with those in the selected project.
• If you choose Add Imported Styles, Scrivener keeps both existing and new styles, and adds a number to the names of the new styles. You can check the styles and decide if you want to delete any later.

Styles are practical and can save you time when formatting your Scrivener projects. Create your own styles or modify existing styles to make formatting text quick and easy.