There are many levels for formatting a book. Your theme creates the overall aesthetic, and the organization ensures everything appears in proper order. But the body of your chapters can also showcase your unique narrative style through text and paragraph styling.

Using Atticus, you can accentuate key points or dialogue, organize information, and/or add more visual elements to your chapters.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a deeper understanding of how to creatively stylize your text, tailoring your formatting to your story’s unique needs and bringing your narrative vision to life.

After importing or writing your book in Atticus, use the main toolbar’s diverse text styling options to enhance your pages and chapters.

The options are similar to standard word processing programs like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. The first three options, for example, are Bold, Italics, and Underline.

Hover over the arrow in the toolbar to find additional formatting options to apply to selected sections of text. Your options include:

To apply any of these formatting options, highlight a section of text in your chapter, hover over the arrow in the toolbar menu, and click on the option you’d like to apply.

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Subheadings are crucial in non-fiction for organising complex ideas, making content more accessible and understandable. They act as a roadmap, enabling readers to quickly find specific information. This is especially beneficial in how-to books, textbooks, and academic works where delivering clear, concise information is essential.

In fiction, while subheadings are less common, they can be used innovatively to enhance storytelling. They can signify shifts in time, location, or perspective, or title individual scenes or vignettes. This clarity is invaluable in complex or non-linear narratives. Authors may also use subheadings to build suspense or underscore thematic elements, enriching the narrative.

Atticus offers five different levels of subheadings, all customizable within your Theme settings. Our Create a Custom Theme tutorial shows you exactly how to choose your Heading Settings.

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You can find options to adjust the alignment of a particular section of text, or to add a bulleted or numbered list in the next dropdown menu.

Ordered and unordered lists are most commonly used in non-fiction to present information in a clear, concise, and organised manner.

Unordered lists, or bullet-point lists, are ideal for grouping related items or ideas without implying a particular order. They’re commonly used in textbooks, self-help books, business books, and academic writing to break down complex ideas into digestible chunks, making the content more reader-friendly.

Ordered lists, or numbered lists, are particularly useful for showing a sequence or a set of steps, such as in a how-to guide or a recipe.

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There are features you can access from the Writing toolbar that help with the overall formatting and layout of your book as well, in addition to text and paragraph styling.

We go in depth on layout features like scene breaks, page breaks, and splitting chapters in our formatting tutorial, have an entire post dedicated to creating hyperlinks and social profiles, one designed to guide you through creating and editing footnotes and endnotes, and another wholly devoted to adding images to your content.

Draw attention to key information in your book with callout boxes in Atticus, enhancing both the visual appeal and readability. They are typically enclosed in a colored box or bordered section, making them stand out from the rest of the content.

To start a callout box:

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To customize the callout box:

Click the cog at the top right of the box to select your style preferences.

You can save your unique design as a Preset for future use by simply entering a preset name and clicking save as preset. Preset configurations can be used across all books in your account.

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Block quotes, which are indented and set apart from the main body of text, can serve a variety of functions.

In non-fiction, block quotes are often used to highlight lengthy quotes or excerpts from other sources. They visually separate the quoted material from the author’s own words, making it clear to the reader that this content comes from an external source.

In fiction, block quotes can be used creatively to distinguish different narrative elements. They might be used for letters, song lyrics, poems, or extended thoughts within the narrative, providing a visual cue to the reader that this text serves a unique purpose. In dialogue-heavy scenes, block quotes can also be used to highlight a monologue or a particularly significant piece of dialogue.

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Verse formatting, where text is broken into lines and stanzas, is indented even further from the main body of text, on both sides of the page.

Verse formatting is primarily used when quoting poetry or song lyrics, but it can also be used for religious or philosophical texts.

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In a hanging indent the first line of a paragraph is flush with the left margin and all subsequent lines are indented inward.

They’re commonly used in non-fiction, especially for reference pages or citations, where hanging indents help in clearly separating the author’s name from the publication details.

In fiction, hanging indents may be used to set apart long stretches of dialogue, making it easier for readers to follow conversations, or to add visual emphasis to poetry or song lyrics.

In Atticus, applying hanging indents is simple:

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Using easy features to add style to your text and paragraphs gives you the options to bring your readers even deeper into the worlds and psyches of your character’s or topics.

If you haven’t explored our tutorials to help you format the book layout or customize your theme, those would be great next steps to getting your manuscript publish-ready!