Vellum flower icon Vellum Help

Text Conversations

Text messages shown between two characters

Use the Text Conversation feature to show text messages sent by characters.

Create a conversation, format each message, then configure your Style to choose how you want messages to appear in your book.

Adding a Text Conversation

To add a Text Conversation to your book, select the paragraphs you wish to format and choose the Text Conversation item from the Text Feature menu.

Vellum's Text Feature menu

Configuring Content

A conversation consists of any number of messages sent between characters, as well as optional names for the sender of the message. To format the conversation, you can configure the type of content for each line of text:

Diagram for types of content in a conversation

You can make these assignments in the Text Editor:

Note: Any Contact Name will be automatically associated with the following message.

Styling

In your book, the conversation will be styled to resemble a series of text messages:

Text Messages, styled as bubbles, shown in an ebook on a Kindle

The appearance shown above is one of several options for how messages are displayed. You can find more options in the Text Conversation section of Styles:

Keep Lines on Same Page

It’s possible for a page break to occur within the middle of a conversation. If you’d prefer this not happen, you can make use of Keep Lines on Same Page, accessible from the gear menu:

Keep Lines On Same Page menu item in menu for Text Conversation

With Keep Lines on Same Page enabled, the whole conversation will stay together on the same page of your book.

Note: Keep Lines on Same Page is not supported by Kobo or Google Play. Vellum’s Preview will reflect this.

Emojis

Emojis are a natural element to include in Text Conversations. You can add emojis into a Text Conversation (or anywhere else in your book) using the Insert Emoji The grinning face icon for the Insert Emoji button button in the Text Editor’s toolbar:

The emoji popup dialog after the Insert Emoji button has been pressed

Note: On Kindle, emojis are represented as small images. Using a large number of different emojis in your ebook can increase KDP delivery costs.