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January 19, 2016 by Nina Amir 13 Comments

How to Reduce Formatting Time Using Scrivener

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Design on wordpressI write a lot of blog posts every week, so I’m always looking for ways to speed up my process. Although most of my posts don’t feature tons of graphics or charts, formatting adds time—sometimes more than I predict. I can reduce this particular time-suck if I format my posts in Scrivener using MultiMarkdown language.

What is MultiMarkdown

MultiMarkdown is a lightweight markup language based on Markdown. (Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can be converted to HTML and many other formats.) MultiMarkdown supports more export-formats and implements some added features currently not available with plain Markdown syntax.

In simple terms, MultiMarkdown gives those of us who don’t know how to write code, or HTML, a way to do so.

MultiMarkdown is simple to use. It’s not a lot different than writing. You can find a cheat sheet by clicking here. Basically, you use a special “code” that consists of things like asterisks, brackets, and pound signs (hashtags) to help you create italic and bold type, links, and different sized headings. Extra spaces (two to be exact) create the end of a line or paragraph and a space between paragraphs.

To see what this post looked like when written in MultiMarkdown, click here.

What is Scrivener

ScrivenerScrivener, of course, is one of the most popular writing tools today. I use it for writing books, blogging books, and composing my blog posts. It is available both for the Mac and PCs.

Scrivener helps you keep your writing projects organized. It works a bit like the old trapper keepers or a filing cabinet with folders. Additionally, it provides a variety of ways to export documents. That means you can “compile” to a Word doc, a variety of ebook formats, or a PDF.

How I Discovered the Process

When I first attempted to cut some time out of my blogging process, I hired a virtual assistant to do all my blog-post formatting. That allowed me to focus on writing. (When you write four posts per week or more, you need that extra time!) However, this became expensive quickly.

Ad24-250x250After I learned to use Scrivener with the Learn Scrivener Fast program, I discovered I could use MultiMarkdown to format my posts right in Scrivener. I then just copied and pasted them into the “text” view in WordPress. At the time, I had a plugin that converted the MultiMarkdown language, so no other step was necessary.

After one of the recent WordPress updates, the plugin stopped working, and a colleague told me he could no longer use Jetpack Markdown, another plugin, for this purpose either. That left me seeking another solution.

Luckily, Scrivener possessed the answer—and an easy way to get my posts out of Scrivener and into WordPress with minimal, if any, formatting.

How to Use MultiMarkdown and Scrivener to Format Posts

Here are the steps I use to go from Scrivener to WordPress using MultiMarkdown. Follow them, and you won’t need to format your posts.

First, in Scrivener, write your post as you would normally, but use MultiMarkdown “code” for all your formatting needs. Pretty simple. If you want to check that you’ve used MultiMarkdown correctly, drag Jon Combe’s Markdown Editor into Scrivener, and use it to check your work.

MultiMarkdown editor

Second, when you finish your post, “compile” or export. To avoid using a plugin, compile for “MultiMarkdown —>web page (.html).” This produces a document that can only be opened in a web browser.

easy wordpress formatting

Third, open your compiled document. (It saves in the same location all your other Scrivener compiles.) When you click on it, it will open in your web browser.

Scrivener compile as webpage

Fourth, copy the formatted text.

Scrivener compile web copy

Finally, paste the text into a new blog post in WordPress.

Scrivener to WordPress compile

Occasionally, I need to tweak a little formatting, but is usually due to user error. And I add photos in WordPress.

I find this process enormously efficient and easy to use. Try it, and let me know what you think. If you have another way to format in Scrivener using MultiMarkdown and save time formatting in WordPress, leave me a comment below.

 

Photo courtesy of ronstik|Fotolia.com

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Filed Under: Building a Better Blog, Writing Posts/Chapters Tagged With: formatting, MultiMarkdown, post formatting, Scrivener, time

Comments

  1. Barbara Graver says

    January 19, 2016 at 9:58 am

    Very helpful post. Thank you!

  2. Mike says

    January 3, 2017 at 12:12 pm

    Or, why not just login to WordPress and write directly into it? why would you waste so much time messing around as you have described?

    You seem to be making a job a lot harder than it should be.

  3. Nina Amir says

    January 4, 2017 at 1:29 am

    It makes my job easier, and I never just write in WordPress. You can’t check grammar there, and it’s easy to lose your work. Plus, if you ever want to use your posts for a book, it’s good to have them somewhere else.

  4. Erik says

    April 11, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    Hey,

    Thanks for the article!

    I think the latest versions of WordPress has support for Markdown (but maybe not Mulitmarkdown?):
    https://en.support.wordpress.com/markdown/

    Best Regards,

    /Erik

  5. Nina Amir says

    April 12, 2017 at 3:40 pm

    Yes, this is only for wordpress.com. not wordpress.org.

  6. Mike Barlow says

    September 3, 2017 at 7:49 am

    Thanks for this great write up. I am getting used to Scrivener and plan to use it with WordPress 90% of the time so making sure that I can bounce back and forth between the two before I get too far into it is important.

  7. Nina Amir says

    September 3, 2017 at 9:29 am

    Mike,

    Yes, it’s important for sure! I’ve written about Scrivener before. I love it, and it does speed up my formatting!

  8. Gaurav Tiwari says

    March 31, 2018 at 2:20 am

    Exactly what I was looking for. It’s a huge pain publishing into WordPress from Scrivener. Thanks you too that trouble will feel less annoying.

  9. Nina Amir says

    April 1, 2018 at 2:13 pm

    Awesome! Good luck!

  10. Howardl says

    April 27, 2018 at 1:10 am

    Why not use Marked2 with Scrivener, it compiles Scrivener documents and exports to a number of formats including html very quickly.

  11. Nina Amir says

    May 1, 2018 at 8:33 pm

    Is that a plugin, Howardl?

  12. Morgan Reece says

    June 13, 2018 at 6:27 am

    Exactly what I needed. Thanks so much!

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Nina Amir, the Inspiration to Creation Coach, inspires writers to create published products and careers as authors as well as to achieve their goals and fulfill their purpose and potential.

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