Body Style

Configuring the Body Style

With your Style selected, click the Configure button:

In the list of Style features, select Body:

Body Style Editor

The Body Style editor displays options for the text of each element:

Paragraph, justification, and hyphenation options apply to both ebook and print editions of your book.

The Print Edition section allows you to choose a font for your print edition, and whether Scene Breaks should be clarified.

Hyphenation

The Allow Hyphenation checkbox in the Body Style editor controls whether long words in your book can be split across two lines. Hyphenation is on by default, and is recommended, especially if Justify text is enabled.

Capitalized Words

Disabling Hyphenate capitalized words can be useful if, say, you don’t want character or location names to be hyphenated.

Disabling for Specific Words

You can also prevent hyphenation per word. For instance, you may not like where the word “vocabulary” is being hyphenated:

To prevent this word from being hyphenated, select it in Vellum’s Text Editor. Then right-click (or Control-click) on the selection to bring up the context menu and choose Disable Hyphenation:

When you’ve disabled hyphenation for a word, the Text Editor will display a blue underline underneath it.

Vellum’s Preview will also show you the updated layout after you’ve disabled hyphenation for a particular word.

✨ This feature was added in Vellum 3.4. Make sure you are up-to-date.

Clarifying Scene Breaks

When a Scene Break lands at the top or bottom of a page, Vellum can add subtle ornamentation to clarify to the reader that this is a scene break and not, say, a printing error:

We recommend keeping this on, especially for novels. If you prefer not to use clarified breaks — e.g. it doesn’t fit the style of your non-fiction book — then you can uncheck this option.

Note: When unchecked, any Scene Break that lands at the top of a page will not be shown, and the text that follows will move to the top.