In addition to the alignment options for paragraph, can you also add a way to control paragraph indent (e.g. for an extract or quote) and indenting of first line of paragraphs? I found that after importing an entire doc with chapters into Ream, I find some of my chapters have indented first lines (which I don’t have in my original doc) which is a pain to change or delete indent space individually.
Please add a way to globally remove blank line between paragraphs.
Please add a few choices of decorative scene break symbols/lines.
Yeah, I copy/pasted a chapter in block paragraph format from a google doc, and my paragraphs ended up indented with the block spacing. I don’t know why, and I couldn’t see a way to change anything.
I don’t particularly care if the paragraphs are indented or block format, just as long as they’re not both.
I do expect first line indenting, and no spacing between paragraphs as a reader, and always use it as an author. So this is another vote for that please if it’s not available at the moment. To me, anything else is unreadable and it’s one reason I pass on KU books that have no indentation, and blank lines between paragraphs. Either is enough for me to not get past the look inside. I don’t really want to present potential readers with improperly formatted paragraphs and honestly, don’t need readers who like that.
I’m going to rebel a little here and insist that any formatting options be 1) optional and 2) overridden by reader preferences.
How I like to read a story is not like how other people read a story, and quite frankly, what an author prefers in formatting (outside of aspects that inform the text, such as block quotes, italicizing, etc.) should absolutely NOT be allowed to override what a reader wants. This is an accessibility issue, and it may seem like not a big deal about whether there are extra spaces or indents on first chapters or not, but believe me, if someone is reading a story at 600% magnification due to sight issues, our opinions don’t matter. Same with fonts (dyslexia) and colors (color blindness): readers should be able to override all those kinds of settings. I want my reader experiences to be seamless and frictionless for them.
I second (or third or whatever) the idea of using block quotes. I have letters that my character reads and those need to be set off from the rest of the text.
I agree 100% with this. As a reader, if I’m on my tablet/monitor, I prefer indents. If I’m reading on a phone, I NEED the blank spaces between paragraphs. As an author, I want my readers to be comfortable with their reading experience, not project my idea of what’s proper onto them.
The below text is copied from the email where this feature was announced.
How to Create Text Messages in Stories
First things first, navigate to your Author Dashboard inside Ream.
Then navigate to the Stories tab and create a new story or edit an existing one.
Once inside the story editor in Ream simply:
Highlight the text you want to turn into a text message.
Right-click inside the same text you have highlighted and Ream’s context menu will appear.
Select Text Features from the menu options and pick Left Text Message or Right Text Message.
Note: Adding text messages to stories is best done on a desktop or laptop. Please do this on a desktop or laptop :).
You will notice that there are also a bunch of other fun options in the context menu that will help you quickly format your stories on desktop and laptop.
Inside the story editor on Ream you can simply press enter/return or navigate to a new line.
You can then add more text and choose to turn it into another text message or keep it as standard text in Ream.
Text messages are centered to make the reading experience as seamless as possible!
And on mobile devices, text messages inside stories look just like texts on your phone.
Text messages also are visible to readers across Dark Mode and Sepia Mode inside Ream.
It works great! But any chance we could have a different color than purple for the POV text bubble? The color hurts my eyes when I read the text. Maybe we could have the text bubble just align left or right so we know who’s texting but keep everything greyscale. Your UX/UI designer will probably have a better idea on how to do this but yeah, the purple hurts my eyes.
I just want my published work to look exactly how it looked on google drive. I write in script format, and it seems my kind is a massive minority when it comes to these online platforms.
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