Right – I had to play around with this to refresh my memory, hence the delay.
Problem: You want to have the first three words of each Chapter set in small caps.
This is how you do it in Version 3 – it’s all done in compilation, no need for anything in the editor (or not much…)
As I understand it, in the Binder you have Chapters (folders with just the title, not actual text) and Scenes (the titles are ignored and only the text is compiled), which are subdocuments of the chapter folders.
So that’s two basic Section Types (Chapter and Scene – the names don’t really matter). So you compile and choose the compile format, then assign each section type to a section layout. Normally this will be something like Chapter Heading and Section (here it’s the look which matters, not the name.)
By default, most of the default Section Layouts don’t come with a ‘first three words small-cap’ layout, so you’ll have to create one. In fact it’s much simpler just to modify a copy of the Scene layout which already does most of what you want, minus the small caps.
Duplicate the compilation format and edit it. In the edit dialogue choose Section Layouts on the left, then on the right, highlight the layout you use for scenes. Click the plus sign to duplicate it and give it a meaningful name (‘Smallcap Scene’).
With Smallcap scene selected, click on the tab marked New Pages in the dummy text box below. You’ll see a number of options , including the number of words you want to make uppercase (3) and a tick box to choose Small Caps. Make sure that you tick the box Upper case even when section is not after a page break. Now click back on the Formatting tab to see the effect of the change. The dummy text should show the first three words in small caps.
Click save to exit the edit dialogue, and go to Assign Sections Layouts again, but time assign your Scene Section Type to your new SmallCap Scene layout. Compile and you should find that all the scenes now begin with 3 words in Small Caps.
But… you may want only the first scene in a chapter to have the small caps, and subsequent scenes to be as before. No problem… all you need to do is create a new Section Type in the Editor (e.g. ‘First Scene’) and assign it to the first child scene of each binder. Then in compilation, assign First Scene to the layout ‘Small Cap scene’ and ordinary Scenes to the normal default Scene layout. That should be it – the first scene of every chapter gets small caps, the rest don’t.
(There are other ways of doing the same thing, but this is what I’d do.)
Again, it takes a lot longer to type out than it does to do, once you’ve got the hang of how compilation works.
You’ll have to play around a bit to get it exactly how you want it, but I hope this helps to get you started!