General Project Settings

Project Settings on the left rail holds the defaults for the whole book. Anything set here applies everywhere unless a Local Setting overrides it for one particular paragraph, table, or figure.

The panel is a list of sections; several have their own chapter in this tutorial.

Template

Change Template swaps the book's design, and the Sections list below it lets you leave out individual parts the template supplies. See Templates and Boilerplate.

General

Project-wide document settings:

  • Watermark — text stamped across every page, for drafts.
  • Cover and Back Cover — the cover images.
  • Template — turn this project into a publishable template.
  • Form — turn this project into a form that collects submissions. See Forms and Submissions.

Page Layout

The physical shape of the book:

  • Page Width and Page Height
  • Top Margin and Bottom Margin
  • Inside Margin and Outside Margin — inside is the binding edge, so these swap over between left- and right-hand pages
  • Header Ascent and Footer Descent — how far the running head and foot sit into the margin
  • Bleed — extra area beyond the trim edge for images that run off the page; your printer will tell you what they need
  • Font Size — the base size everything else is measured against

Paragraphs

Every built-in paragraph style, each with its own settings, plus any custom styles you have created. See Paragraphs and Other Content Styles.

Custom Text Styles

Character-level styles you define yourself and apply to selected text — a font for quotations, a colour, a highlight. Each can be renamed and given a full font treatment. Useful when the same treatment recurs throughout a book, because changing the style updates every use of it.

How hyperlinks are rendered in the built book.

Table of Contents and List of Figures

Layout and formatting for the two generated listings. See Table of Contents.

Headings

One subsection per heading level — Part Title, Chapter Title, Section, Subsection, and Subsubsection — each with its own numbering, fonts, spacing, and layout. There is also a setting to restart chapter numbering under each part. See Chapter Titles, Parts, and Section Headings.

Page Numbers

  • Enabled — whether page numbers appear at all.
  • Roman Numerals for Front Matter — numbers the front matter i, ii, iii and restarts at 1 for the body, which is the usual convention for books.
  • Start At — the number on the first numbered page, for a volume that continues the paging of an earlier one, or a section printed on its own. With Roman Numerals for Front Matter on it is the body that starts here instead, and the front matter still runs from i. Left- and right-hand pages follow the number, so starting on an even one puts the wide binding margin where that page expects it.
  • Position — where on the page they sit.

Headers and Footers

Running heads and feet are no longer a set of fields to fill in. Edit Template opens a small editor showing the header and footer as they will appear, and you lay them out directly — typing fixed text and dropping in variables such as the chapter title, the short title, the author, or the page number.

This is why it is worth defining variables on the details page: they can be placed into the running head here rather than retyped.

The template is laid out in three slots across the page: one at each edge and one in the middle. The middle one sits on the centre line of the page and stays there, so a running head placed in it lines up with itself on left- and right-hand pages no matter how wide the page number beside it grows. The two edge slots share whatever is left over.

Chapters

What happens at a chapter boundary:

  • Show Chapter Title — whether the title is printed.
  • New Page — run straight on, start on a new page, or start on the next even or odd page.
  • Columns — the number of text columns.
  • Drop Cap — an enlarged opening capital.
  • Headers and Footers — whether running heads and feet appear on chapter openings.
  • Headpiece and Tailpiece — decorative elements at the start and end of a chapter.

Notes, Annotations

The two independent note families, each with its own placement, markers, and layout. See Footnotes/Endnotes and Annotations.

Citations

  • Citation Style — the CSL style used for citations and the bibliography.
  • Condense Subsequent Citations — after the first full citation of a work, use the shortened form.

See Citations and Bibliography.

Math, Figures, Tables, Lists

Defaults for each kind of content: equation numbering; figure captions, labels, and float behaviour; the default table style preset and float settings; and the numbering and alignment of Numbered Lists and Bullet Lists. Each has its own chapter.

➔ Annotations

Local Settings ➔