Chapter And Verse

Inkwell can typeset scripture: chapter numbers set as large dropped numerals, and verse numbers as small raised figures through the text. This is what you want if you are producing a Bible, a New Testament, a lectionary, or any edition that quotes scripture at length with its numbering intact.

This is a different feature from the Scripture Index, which finds references like "John 3:16" in ordinary prose and collects them into a back-matter index. This chapter is about setting the scripture itself.

Turning it on

Chapter and verse support is off by default, because almost no project needs it. Switch on Chapters and Verses under General in Project Settings — beside Template and Form — and the toolbar buttons, the shortcuts, the \v/\c typing rules and a Chapters and Verses settings section all appear. Importing USFM switches it on for you.

While it is off none of it is in your way — \v 3 is just text in an ordinary manuscript, and that is what it stays. Markers already in a document keep printing either way; the switch governs how you add them, not whether they appear on the page.

How a Bible is arranged

One book of the Bible is one Inkwell chapter. Genesis is a single chapter in your project, containing all fifty of its chapter markers. Bible chapters are markers inside the text, not Inkwell chapters of their own — a Bible chapter runs on down the page where an Inkwell chapter starts a new one.

So a complete Bible is a project of sixty-six chapters, one per book, with Genesis, Exodus and the rest listed in the chapter sidebar.

Importing from USFM

If your text comes from Paratext or any other translation project, it is already in USFM, and you should import it rather than retype it. Choose Upload File from the import menu and select your .usfm or .sfm files. You can select all of them at once.

You can do this either way round: into a project you already have, or from the New Project dialog, which offers the same import menu and starts the project from the files you pick.

Inkwell reads the \id code in each file and puts the books in biblical order, so it does not matter what order the file picker hands them over in. Each file becomes one chapter, named from the book's \h or \toc1 line.

The import brings across:

• chapter and verse markers (\c, \v), exactly as numbered in your text
• paragraphs (\p, \m, \pi) and poetry lines (\q1 through \q4)
• section headings (\s1, \s2) and major section headings (\ms)
• psalm descriptive titles (\d) and speaker labels (\sp)
• translator's footnotes (\f), and cross-references (\x) as annotations
• the divine name (\nd) in small caps, supplied words (\add) in italics, quoted scripture (\qt) and transliterations (\tl)
• the words of Christ (\wj), emphasis (\em), Selah (\qs) and an epistle's signature (\sig), each as a text style you can restyle
• word-level tagging (\w ... \w*), whose Strong's numbers are dropped and whose words are kept

Poetry, lists, psalm titles and speaker labels arrive as paragraph styles named Poetry 1, Scripture List 1, Psalm Title and so on. They are ordinary styles: change their indents and type in Project Settings and every line using them changes with it. Re-importing a revised book keeps your changes rather than resetting them.

Four markers work the same way one level down, arriving as text styles named Words of Christ, Emphasis, Selah and Signature. They start out italic and are listed with your own under Project Settings → Custom Text Styles, so restyling one changes every span that uses it across the whole book.

That is how you make a red-letter edition: import the New Testament, set Words of Christ to the red you want and turn its italics off. A plain edition and a red-letter one are the same import and one setting apart, so you can try it and change your mind.

The rest keep their conventional look as direct formatting rather than as styles — the divine name in small caps, supplied words in italics. Those spans sit inside a \wj speech all the time, and direct formatting layers over the style around it where a second style would replace it: in \wj the \nd Lord\nd* your God\wj*, the divine name comes out in small caps and stays red with the rest of the sentence.

Markers Inkwell does not handle are skipped and the rest of the file imports normally.

Marking chapter and verse by hand

You can also add markers yourself, which you will want for a passage typed or pasted in. Two buttons appear in the toolbar next to the footnote button — C for a chapter number and V for a verse number — or use the keyboard:

• Ctrl+Alt+V inserts a verse number. It continues from the previous verse marker, so marking up a passage is one keypress per verse rather than typing each number. Verses are counted within their chapter, so the first verse after a chapter marker is 1 again.
• Ctrl+Alt+C inserts a chapter number, continuing from the previous chapter marker. Chapters run on through the book rather than restarting.

Either way the cursor ends up just after the marker, so you can carry straight on typing the verse.

If you are used to Paratext, you can also type the markers directly: \v 3 followed by a space becomes a verse marker, and \c 12 followed by a space becomes a chapter marker.

Verse numbers are kept exactly as you enter them and are never renumbered. That matters for merged and split verses — 3-4 and 5a are both legitimate, and both survive untouched.

A marker is deleted like any other single character: put your cursor just after it and press backspace.

Settings

The Chapters and Verses section appears once the switch under General is on.

For chapter numbers:

• Style: Dropped sets the number large, sunk into the opening lines of its paragraph, as most printed Bibles do. Raised and Inline set it in the run of text instead. Hidden omits it, for an edition that prints verse numbers only.
• Height (lines): how many lines of body text a dropped number spans. Two is conventional.
• Gap: the space between the number and the text beside it.
• Font, size, weight and colour, as for any other text.

For verse numbers:

• Raise: how far the number sits above the baseline.
• Gap: the space between the number and the first word of its verse.
• Hide verse 1 after a chapter number: on by default. The chapter number already says where verse 1 begins, and the two numerals set side by side tend to read as a single number.
• Font, size, weight and colour.

A chapter number can only be dropped when it begins its paragraph, since a drop needs lines to sink into. One that falls in the middle of a paragraph is set raised instead.

Two columns

Most Bibles set two columns to the page. That is a per-chapter setting rather than part of this feature — see Columns under chapter settings in General Project Settings.