The editor: writing and formatting

You write on the page in the center, one chapter at a time. All the formatting is on the Home tab of the ribbon and in the Format menu.

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Format the text

Select the text and choose the formatting in the Font group:

• bold (Ctrl+B⌘B), italics (Ctrl+I⌘I) and underline (Ctrl+U⌘U);
• strikethrough, subscript (Ctrl+,⌘,) and superscript (Ctrl+.⌘.);
• highlight (Ctrl+Shift+H⌘⇧H) and Text color;
• the font and its size.

All of that stays in the text itself: the ribbon shows you the font, the size and the color where the cursor is, and you can change them whenever you like. In a title too: if you don't want it in bold, select it and click bold to remove it.

Clear formatting (Ctrl+Space⌃Space) returns the text to its normal look, that of the base font of the work (The editor: writing and formatting).

To give one passage the same look as another, select the one you like, click Copy formatting, select the other one and click Paste formatting: it ends up the same in font, size, color, bold and italics. If you copy a whole paragraph and paste it over whole paragraphs, it also carries its paragraph style, its alignment and its line spacing.

Paragraph styles

Put the cursor in the paragraph and choose from the Styles group: Text, Title, Subtitle, Section or Epigraph. When you hover over each one, you see how the paragraph would look before you choose it. They're also in Format → Paragraph style.

Choosing a style is like using a palette: the paragraph takes that style's font, size, color, bold, italics and line spacing, and from then on they're its own. You can change any of them afterward, in that paragraph only.

For a quotation set apart from the text, use Block quote (Ctrl+Shift+B⌘⇧B).

Your paragraph type palette

You decide what each style applies, for all your works:

1. Choose Tools → Preferences.
2. Open the Paragraph types tab.
3. For each style, choose its Font, its Size (pt), its Color, whether it's in Bold or Italic, and its Line spacing. Same as body text uses the font of the Text style.
4. Click Save.

Changing the palette doesn't touch what you've already written: it applies to the styles you choose from that moment on. Restore the default style brings back the values Exaratio comes with.

The base font of the work

Text you never gave a style to—what you write without choosing anything, what you imported, what your works already had—is shown in the base font of the work. It's the work's default font, the same on screen and in what you export:

1. Choose File → Work properties.
2. Open the Text style tab.
3. Choose the font, the size, the color and the line spacing of the text.
4. Click OK.

Each work has its own. A new work's, when you create it, is that of the Text style of your palette. Whatever you set by hand on a passage always takes precedence over the base font. If you change your mind, undo it with Ctrl+Z⌘Z.

Tidy up a chapter in one go

If you pasted a chapter from somewhere else or wrote it without minding how it looks, click Auto-format, next to the styles (also in Format → Auto-format chapter). Exaratio leaves it looking like a book, without changing a single word:

• it puts the chapter title at the start if it wasn't there, and gives the lines that are titles (“Chapter 3”, “Epilogue”…) the style that matches them, as your palette sets it (The editor: writing and formatting);
• it turns lines with * * * and gaps of several blank lines into scene breaks;
• it joins lines that were left broken in the middle of a sentence;
• it fixes the typography according to the work's language: extra spaces, dialogue dashes, quotation marks and ellipses;
• it justifies the prose with an indent, except for the first paragraph after a heading or a break.

Whatever you centered or right-aligned on purpose is kept. When it's done, a notice sums up what it did and offers Undo; you can also undo it with Ctrl+Z⌘Z.

Paragraph: alignment, indentation and lists

The Paragraph group has:

• alignment: center (Ctrl+Shift+E⌘⇧E), right (Ctrl+Shift+R⌘⇧R) and justify (Ctrl+Shift+J⌘⇧J);
• first-line indentation, which you increase or decrease in steps;
• Line spacing;
• Lists: bulleted (Ctrl+Shift+8⌘⇧8) or numbered (Ctrl+Shift+7⌘⇧7).

Scene breaks and special characters

To separate two scenes, type *** or --- at the start of an empty line, or choose Insert → Scene separator. In the book it appears as a centered “* * *”.

The dialogue dash, quotation marks and other symbols are in Insert → Special character, grouped by type; the ones you use often stay close at hand in Recently used.

Spelling

Turn on the spell checker in Review → Spelling. Questionable words are underlined; right-click one to see the suggestions or to Add to dictionary.

Write without distractions

On the View tab:

• Distraction-free (Ctrl+Shift+D⌘⇧D) leaves only the page. Press Esc to leave it.
• Typewriter keeps the line you're typing halfway down the screen, as on a typewriter.
• Strict typewriter doesn't let you delete: No deleting or Strike out instead of deleting. It's useful for writing a first draft in one go.
• Line numbers numbers the lines in the margin.

View → Full screen (F11F11) fills the whole screen, and Ctrl+F1⌘F1 collapses the ribbon.

Zoom in and out

Ctrl+=⌘= zooms in, Ctrl+-⌘- zooms out and Ctrl+0⌘0 goes back to Actual size. You can also use Ctrl and the mouse wheel. Exaratio remembers the size you chose.