Troubleshooting
Manual tabs/spaces used for paragraph indentation instead of proper paragraph styles
How you'd notice this
Paragraph indents look slightly inconsistent from one paragraph to the next, or reflow strangely (extra space appearing mid-line, ragged first-line spacing) after any edit that shifts line breaks, a sign the indent was typed in with the Tab key or spacebar rather than set as a paragraph rule.
Why it happens
A typed tab or a run of spaces is treated as literal characters, not a formatting instruction, it moves with the text if a line reflows, can end up mid-paragraph after an edit, and doesn't apply automatically to new paragraphs. A proper first-line-indent paragraph setting (or style) applies consistently to every paragraph using it, automatically, forever.
How to fix it
You haven't picked a formatting program yet, so every program's steps are shown below, pick a tab for the one you're using.
- Use Find & Replace with "Use wildcards" on (or Find & Replace > More > Special) to search for a Tab character (^t) at the start of a paragraph and replace with nothing, to strip manually-typed tabs in bulk.
- Then set a real first-line indent: select body text, open Paragraph settings (Home > Paragraph group, small arrow), and under Indentation > Special, choose "First line" and set an indent amount (commonly 0.2"–0.3").
- Better yet, build this into your Normal/body-text style (Home > Styles, right-click Normal > Modify > Format > Paragraph) so every paragraph using that style indents automatically going forward.
- Use Find and replace (Ctrl+H) with "Search with regular expressions" turned on to find and remove leading tab characters (\t at start of line) or repeated leading spaces.
- Set a real indent via Format > Align & indent > Indentation options, choosing a first-line indent value, or better, edit your "Normal text" style (Format > Paragraph styles > Normal text > Update to match / Options) so it applies automatically.
- Atticus applies paragraph indentation globally from the Formatting panel's typography settings, you generally never type manual tabs at all. If you're troubleshooting text imported from elsewhere with manual tabs baked in, strip them in a text editor or Word first, then re-import so Atticus's own indent setting takes over cleanly.
- Use Edit > Find/Change > GREP tab and search for a leading tab (^\t) at paragraph starts to remove manually-typed indents in bulk.
- Set a real first-line indent on your body Paragraph Style (Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles, double-click the style > Indents and Spacing > First Line Indent) so every paragraph using that style indents automatically.
- Scrivener has its own paragraph indent setting in Format > Paragraph, or a per-project default under the ruler, set a real first-line indent there rather than typing tabs, manually-typed tabs can also carry through Compile as literal characters.
- If text with manual tabs was imported from elsewhere, strip them (a plain text editor's find/replace works) before bringing it into Scrivener.
- Use Edit > Find > Find & Replace with "Advanced" search options if your version supports character-code search for tabs, otherwise manually check the start of a sample of paragraphs.
- Set a real indent via the Format inspector's Style tab (Indent controls), or better, redefine your body paragraph style from a correctly-indented paragraph so it applies automatically everywhere.
- Reedsy Studio's typesetting themes apply paragraph indentation globally, you generally never type manual tabs at all. If importing text with manual tabs baked in, strip them in Word or a text editor first, then bring the cleaned text into Reedsy Studio.
- Vellum applies paragraph indentation globally as part of your chosen style, you generally never type manual tabs at all. If importing text with manual tabs baked in, strip them in Word or a text editor first, then bring the cleaned text into Vellum.
- Use Find & Replace (Ctrl+H) with "Regular expressions" enabled to search for a leading tab (\t at start of line) and replace with nothing.
- Set a real first-line indent: select body text, Format > Paragraph > Indents & Spacing tab, set "First line" indent, or build it into your paragraph style (Styles sidebar, right-click the style > Modify) so it applies automatically going forward.