Aliases: one character, many names

A character is rarely called the same thing every time. Ines Kerith can be “Ines”, “the director” or “Mrs. Kerith”. Aliases teach Exaratio all those forms.

Add aliases

1. Open the entity's sheet and click Edit (the pencil).
2. In Alias, type each name and press Enter or a comma. Each alias becomes a tag.
3. Click OK.

To remove one, click the × on its tag.

If an alias already names another entity, the dialog warns you right away. You can leave it that way, but in the text that name will be left in doubt between the two.

How names are recognized

• It looks for whole words: “Will” isn't mistaken for “Willow”.
• If one name is inside a longer one, the longer one wins: “The House of Maps” is recognized as a whole.
• It doesn't matter whether you type “the Director” or “the director”. But if a name in your work always has a capital letter, like “Earth”, Exaratio respects that and doesn't confuse it with “earth”.
• Type each alias exactly as it appears in the text, with its accents: “Zoë” and “Zoe” are two different forms. If you use both, add both.

A recognized name gets a dotted underline. One shared by two entities gets a wavy line: Exaratio doesn't know which one you mean.

When a name belongs to two

Select the name in the text and choose Review → Associate selection, or right-click → Associate with an existing entity. Choose who it refers to. The association takes priority over recognition and gets a solid line (Where everyone appears: mentions and occurrences).

When a name is nobody

Sometimes a word matches a name without being one: your character is called Rose and the text has “a rose”. Right-click that word and choose Here “rose” is not an entity. It stops being recognized there, and stays the same in the rest of the book (Where everyone appears: mentions and occurrences).

Change an entity's name

Change the Name in Edit. Your text doesn't change: if you want the old name to still be recognized, add it as an alias. To change it in the text as well, use Find and replace across the whole work.