Scrivener for essays/dissertations

[Hollis]

Anyone use this? It looks really good.. though I am wondering if it is worth the time working out how to use it properly?

Or do folk just bash out their notes/outlines/ essays in word still?

 

[maldwyn]

There's a three month free trail, try it.

I like it but can't justify/afford the price.

 

[temper_tantrum]

I've been using it to write a book with (a project that's now on hold for other reasons). Very good. Helps keep all the differing strands of thought separate and really good for structuring and what-needs-doing-next planning etc.

 

[editor]

I gave it a go but found I preferred more basic note taking apps.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

I thought this would be about amanuenses.

 

[Crispy]

Sparrow used it to write her doctoral thesis. Really good IMO. Keeps everything in one place and lets you work on different sections separately from each other, so you can swap versions in and out of the complete document. All sorts of nice features.

 

[Mapped]

I have a guy I work with who is much more technical than me and he mentioned scrivener in conjunction with Markdown in regard to creating some content for our project. He used it to write his phd thesis. I've not looked into this yet, but the email he sent me said:

Markdown is marvellous for early stages of writing just about anything (though esp. handy for technical docs and web content) - you can just ignore formatting and focus on the content & structure. A bit like LaTeX in that regard, dunno if you've used that in the past.

Marvellous for authoring web content since there's lots of support for in the form of HTML converters, plus you can inline any extra HTML if you need. Plus Github is great support for it (http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/) and it's in fact the most common README syntax in use on Github by now, from what I've seen anyway.

I have a recommendation: try Markdown syntax in combination with the Scrivener writing app (http://www.literatureandlatte.com). This is the setup I used for my big book thesis. Scrivener can pump out TeX, via a Markdown -> LaTeX converter, and this I used to create a super-pretty ready for print PDF.

Scrivener not that useful for collaborative editing, but great for early solo drafting of especially bigger pieces. It can also spit out an RTF or Word file (plus several other word processor formats) with some basic formatting, so you can generate one of those and E-mail to people (and end up in Highlight Changes Hell if you have more than a couple of others editing!) . Or upload to Google Docs for co-editing, or whatever.

I'm not really at the write up stage for my dissertation, but I'm going to look into the above for the work stuff and see if it is suitable.

 

[mango5]

I'm trying to drag myself away from pencil, paper, index cards and bits of string. Is there anyone in London who has time to walk me through setting Scrivener up for a big brainy project?

 

[Hollis]

Jesus Christ...index cards ?

 

[RedDragon]

Damn, I was hoping this was an update announcing a price cut.

 

[editor]

I had a quick play with Scrivener a while back but couldn't get into it.

 

[Corax]

What's wrong with a good quality fountain pen?

 

[toggle]

What's wrong with a good quality fountain pen?

nothing for what it does, but it won't let me text edit all that easily

 

[Pingu]

nothing for what it does, but it won't let me text edit all that easily

pencil?

 

[Corax]

nothing for what it does, but it won't let me text edit all that easily

Just get it right the first time then!

Young people today, no standards...

 

[toggle]

Just get in right the first time then!

Young people today, no standards...

just imagine i've had a rant, ok. it's easier this way, i don't have to write it and nobody has to read it. you know what my rants look like

 

[toggle]

Ok, \I like scrivener, cause i can more easily write chunks of text, label them and move them about just by moving the filename from one folder to another. so i can change structure of my docs.

i can also throw about non printing notes in the same way, atatch my pdf files that i've referenced. although i've been told there's better programs for that, i haven't had time to play with them yet. it suits the way i write though, start somewhere at random and then fit it together, and remove bits and save them for a later project.
only irritation is a lack of endnote integration

had a look at latex and that's far more than i need, think it suits someone adding a lot of 'not text' more. only thing i'm adding that isn't text is one of 2 tables and i don't need latex to do that.