How to Use Handwriting

Can use presets

Handwriting blocks are perfect for letters, diary entries, notes, and any text that should appear handwritten in your book. For texting between characters, see text message conversations.

How to Create Handwriting

1. Select the text you want to format as handwriting
2. Click the handwriting icon in your editor toolbar
3. View your formatted handwriting text instantly

Customizing Your Handwriting

When you select a handwriting block, the inline style panel appears on the left side of the editor. This panel has two tabs that give you full control over your handwriting’s appearance: Text and Spacing.

Text

• Font — Choose from handwriting-styled fonts
• Size — Set the font size of your handwriting text
• Line Spacing — Control the space between lines of text
• Alignment — Left, Center, Right, or Justified

Handwriting Fonts Only

Handwriting blocks only display handwriting-styled fonts. This gives you a curated selection of script fonts rather than showing all available fonts. To add expressive flourishes inside the text, see add emojis to your book.

Spacing

• Paragraph Spacing — Control the space between paragraphs within your handwriting block

What Counts as a Paragraph

Paragraphs are created with a full return (Enter key). If you hold Shift and press Return, you create a line break instead. You can identify line breaks by the small sideways L symbol that appears to the right. Line breaks do not count as paragraph separations. Make sure you use a clear Enter to separate paragraphs if you want paragraph spacing to apply.

• Paragraph Indentation — Indent the first line of each paragraph within your handwriting block
• Outer Spacing — Left, Right, Top, and Bottom space around the entire handwriting block

Trim Top Spacing on New Page

Print Only

This setting only affects your print-ready PDF.

When this element happens to land at the top of a new page in print, the empty space above it can look awkward. Turn on this setting to automatically remove the top outer spacing whenever the element starts a new page. The inner padding is left alone, so the element itself still looks exactly the same.

Using Presets

You can save and reuse handwriting styles with presets. This makes it easy to apply consistent formatting across all handwriting blocks in your book.

Finding Handwriting

Use the Elements tab in the section sidebar to find all handwriting in your book and jump directly to any of them.

Why Use Handwriting Instead of a Blockquote?

You could technically use a blockquote and set it to a handwriting font. The difference is categorization. Handwriting elements appear in their own category in the Elements tab, making it easy to find and navigate all handwritten text in your book. If you have letters, diary entries, or notes scattered throughout your manuscript, using the handwriting feature keeps them organized and easy to locate.