More Formatting Options

Comments: 64

• 30 Nov, '17
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  I would like to know more about this, what the formatting is for. This can help to make a better feature rather than re-creating Word in the browser (Google already did that).

• 01 Dec, '17
  Violet

  I'm not the person who submitted this, but personally I would use centered text for something like a poem or song that was being quoted in a story.

• 03 Dec, '17
  Nina Light

  OK, it might have been me... Let's see: from the top of my head, Word features I use when I'm writing: quotes/poems with left indentation; text with left and right indentation; simple align right; italics; centring; different font sizes; bold; pagination; page numbers; double spacing (industry standard); copy/paste/cut; [docs merge; in docs annotation, though these may go under editing features]. There might be more. Oh, & by the way, Google did only 1/2 a job of replicating Word...

• 10 May, '18
  Miri

  I don't expect this to have the functionality of MS word (as I know this does not have a huge dev team and you can't implement everything), but a few more customization options would be great. Underlining and strike-through text, center/right-aligned text, formats for the chapter titles (allowing us to give subtitles or turn parts of the options off); optional page numbers corresponding w/common paper sizes...

• 16 May, '18
  Kate

  Bullet points for outlining would be SO helpful.

• 13 Jul, '18
  Emily Smith

  I would like the option to single space the manuscript. It's distracting for me that I can't change it.

• 02 Aug, '18
  Kidd

  I'd at least like the ability to use bold and/or italic text, or maybe even just different colors of text.
  
  My reason for this is because I primarily use Dabble to create scripts for narrative-focused PC games. As such, having additional formatting options would make it easier for me to differentiate between dialog and narration, between different logical paths, etc.

• 06 Oct, '18
  az

  definitely gotta agree with adding strike through, page numbers, and different font sizes

• 24 Oct, '18
  Esme

  Definitely needs centered texts

• 27 Oct, '18
  Peach

  Bold and italic text and I agree, the option to single or double space.

• 01 Nov, '18
  JordanH

  Some Non-Fiction features would be awesome! Like...
  1. Footnotes or Endnotes
  2. Markdown support in "Manuscript" area like the "Story Notes" section. Headings would be great, as non-fiction texts can have several sections within a chapter.
  
  Thanks for asking!!

• 07 Dec, '18
  Cedar

  My 2 cents: In order to use Dabble for my Non-fiction work, I would need to be able to:
  Underline (ctrl U does NOT work for that), indent, bullet point, make footnotes(way complicated, so I can probably work around this one), copy/paste with & without formatting, paste graphs and lists from excel.
  I know that some of these already are there and I just don't know how to use them. Underline would be fantastic though.

• 21 Dec, '18
  Scarlett

  Agree with bullet points for story plotting, underlining, and centered text for subtitles and such. Or even just the option to add subtitles to a chapter. My book has the perspectives of 5 different characters so I'd like to put the name of whichever character is at the forefront of that chapter in a more prominent place other than in the chapter title or just at the beginning of the text.

• 24 May, '19
  Brianna M. Fenty

  Agree with above, and I really need smaller margins. What's up with all the white space?

• 11 Jun, '19
  Aly Hayden

  I would also love the ability to center, right align, and justify text. I include an about the author page at the end of every book, and being able to center it in Dabble would be incredibly helpful.

• 29 Jul, '19
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  "Formating" (suggested by Maggie Weiler on 2019-07-28), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 13 Sep, '19
  D.S.

  This is a crucial option for those of us hoping to maximize our workflow using Dabble. By the time we export, even if it's only for revision or initial edits, we want to be doing just that: revising, editing, or tweaking. I'm unable to keep the indent out of each chapter's first sentence. I can't center a block quote, or add a centered subtitle beneath the Chapter number, i.e. for excerpts of journal entries, etc. All crucial things I don't want to have to comb through my ms to readdress.

• 30 Sep, '19
  sharks

  I just want the ability to highlight text, as an easy way for me to identify placeholders when I go back to edit. Dabble doesn't need all the fancy formatting stuff because it's not a word processor - you should always export to Word or Vellum or something else for that. Dabble is meant for DRAFTING, and I love it as is. But the ability to highlight text in yellow or pink or some other bright color (we don't need options, just give us a simple highlighter) would be really handy.

• 04 Oct, '19
  Jack

  Italics, bold, and text orientation (left, center, right) are all features I would be happy to have. While I don't personally think I would use it, I second that it makes sense to be able to easily format scene cards to do bullets. Though, to be fair, that's also pretty easy to do a simple equivalent of yourself with (-)'s

• 15 Oct, '19
  Janalyn Robnett

  If you're working a novel, indenting of paragraphs is needed. Some paragraphs don't need indenting, such as the first one in each chapter. So the ability to choose to indent or not indent is needed. Also how much of an indent. 3-5 spaces are my chosen range. Change in font is necessary, too. Most publishers will not work with certain fonts. Times New Roman is the default, but Courier can be an option, too. Thank you for the Bold or Italics, though. Always a plus. :)

• 19 Nov, '19
  Pam

  I would like to see strikethrough and highlighting options added.

• 29 Jan, '20
  Raven

  I would love italics, maybe different font choices as there's no way to change them, bolded fonts, underlined possibly. But the big one for me is being able to change my font. I will wait to use dabble until these features are implemented.

• 26 Feb, '20
  Shauna Merged

  It would be very useful to have an option to turn off paragraph indents and to be able to skip lines in the app without it adding a second line skip when exporting to a document. Right now I'm having to manually format it after exporting, which is irritating, and there is no way to turn off paragraph indents.

• 08 Apr, '20
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  "No Paragraph Indent Option" (suggested by Shauna on 2020-02-26), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 05 May, '20
  lhauley

  I would like the ability to use different font sizes in my project.

• 10 Jun, '20
  Brody

  Being forced to use double spacing immediately turned me off, followed by the auto-indentation at the start of paragraphs (which isn't a *huge* problem but I prefer having some control).

• 30 Jul, '20
  Ryn Cagle

  I know that the app is trying to keep a very minimalist setup when writing but if you do the thing some apps do where you have to highlight the text and then a small toolbar menu of bold, underline, italics, strikethrough, bullet list, numbered list, right oriented text, centered text, left oriented text. That's really all that's needed for most things and would be SO useful. I just started using this and was immediately turned off at the lack of formatting.

• 17 Dec, '20
  TJ Jones

  I'd be happy to be able to underline text.

• 05 Jan, '21
  Megan Spradlin

  A formatting toolbar of some kind that stays put and doesn't immediately fade out; but, has the ability to be closed, would be really appreciated. :/

• 10 Jan, '21
  Diane

  I’d love to see page breaks.

• 24 Jan, '21
  TIm Hoelscher

  I am new to Dabble, and maybe I am missing something but I would love to see page breaks per Diane's comment. I am migrating from Google Docs, which provides a visual break between pages in the UI and allows for hard page breaks (Ctrl + Enter). I am currently querying my manuscript, and this would help with preparing "first X pages" submissions and that sort of thing. I have another feature request in for a more comprehensive query prep tool, but as a stopgap page breaks would be wonderful.

• 07 Feb, '21
  John

  I won't even consider buying it without minimal formatting options. MUST HAVES: italics, bold, font color, centering, font size, ability to single space.

• 22 Feb, '21
  Ashley Pence

  I want to able to use the tab button to make my paragraphs look better

• 01 Apr, '21
  Alanna

  Footnotes and endnotes would be awesome to write more nonfiction pieces. Underlining, Colors, Highlighting, Single space, double spacing.

• 07 May, '21
  Ashley Blake

  I'd like the option to choose from a wide variety of fonts.

• 08 May, '21
  Skye

  Underline, please add underline. And the ability to change font size and/or select and make some headings.

• 01 Jun, '21
  JohnBredesen Admin

  "Options for Formatting export to Word" (suggested by Day on 2021-05-28), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

• 16 Jun, '21
  Alyssa

  I'd like to be able to format the quotation option to right align within the boundaries of the quote.

• 22 Jun, '21
  Miriam

  I don't find where to change the font styles and sizes. I would like to know if that feature exists, if not, I would recommend add it to the program.

• 02 Jul, '21
  Hannah Marshall

  Pages outside of chapters, for introductions

• 27 Jul, '21
  Faa'izah Drewry

  I'd really just like to be able to use italics.

• 31 Jul, '21
  Stephanie

  I'd really like to be able to center text and make things different sizes. My story has multiple POVs and when I switch from one POV to another I want to put the character's name at the top of that section, but I want it to look different from the rest of the story so it doesn't get lost or mistaken as anything other than a notification that the POV has changed. Ideally, I'd also like to give it another font as well, but that's not needed just being able to center it and make it larger would be enough. I did seem to find a bit of a centering button by highlighting and pressing a button with a quotation mark which I found by comeplte accident so making that more obvious would be good!

• 31 Jul, '21
  Stephanie

  I'd also like to adjust the line spacing where needed. For the most part, it's really convenient having Dabble adjust the spacing between paragraphs so that it looks like there is a space between each paragraph without me having to hit enter twice, however, I found that a little irritating when a character was reciting some poetry and I wanted each poem line to be a new line while also not having line gaps, but there was no option to do this so now my poem looks awkward and like multiple paragraphs instead of one block of text on multiple lines, so if we can have that it would be great. Plus the way it formats it with the line gap included exporting it means I have to go in and manually add in those gaps so the paragraphs are distinguishable, which is frustrating. That or i can add in extra lines in dabble having it look a bit awkward there which isn't ideal either.

• 06 Aug, '21
  Day

  I don't want the header/footer, and I'd rather have the output spaced at 1.5. These are small changes, but if I'm sending the ms for an editor or beta reader, for example, it means having to open it, reformat it, save it, and only then send it. I had written more details on my original post, but the idea of more control over the export for word would be super helpful.

• 08 Oct, '21
  Dan

  I've been looking for a dependable novel-writing application for a while now and have been using Dabble for a little over a week, which is a great program for organization. If it were at all possible to add simple features like paragraph alignment (left, center, right, justify) and perhaps a printing feature (which I saw is being planned) because I like to print out my notes as I work, keeping them next to me and accessible, things would go a lot smoother for me, since those little features help me greatly. I know this application is still in its younger stages, so I'm excited to see where Dabble will go in the future. If you guys (creators of Dabble) add in a few more features like the competitor Living Writer, I would choose this over any other app. All you really need to do is make it more customize-friendly. If you give the people the freedom to use it how they want, they will, which would attract many more writers. When a writer isn't satisfied, their ambition changes.

• 03 Nov, '21
  Kurt

  Export to Standard Manuscript Format would be a killer feature for me.

• 10 Nov, '21
  Vivian

  Align text - left, center, right. Subheadings in chapters, especially for non-fiction. Unordered (bullets) and ordered lists (not just 1,2,3...but also a,b,c...and further) with the appropriate indentations. Or just the ability to indent several tabs and we could work around not having the ordered list feature. LOL! I'd like the ability to highlight text in a few different colors for printing when we get that feature (e.g. highlight in red for a note to add a particular image, highlight in blue for special spacing, whatever).

• 11 Nov, '21
  Abby

  While I agree with others that I don't expect (nor necessarily want) this to have the same functionality and formatting options of MS Word, here are some things that I would like to see:
  Lists (numbered and bulleted)
  Headings
  Manual indenting and outdenting of lines/paragraphs

• 16 Dec, '21
  Dan

  I already posted a similar comment regarding certain features on Dabble. I thought to add one more piece of information since the feature I'm looking for isn't yet on the Dabble application. For satisfaction and neatness, the only feature I'm looking for right now is to "Justify" my paragraphs in order to make the project look and feel proper. I love the way you can change certain formatting in the PROJECT SETTINGS where you can change the format of paragraphs (like the Scene Paragraph Style) and wish there was an option to JUSTIFY the paragraph as well. This isn't a very big concern, but adding this would sure make my project look much neater and not have such clobbered words on the right side of the page, giving the project a more 'professional' look to it.
  If this were at all possible in any future updates, I would be tremendously pleased.
  Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm sure other writers would benefit themselves greatly with this, as well.

• 02 Jan, '22
  Amanda

  Bullet points and the ability to change the colour of the text itself (not highlighting) would be amazing!