Placeholder Tags List
There may be times in Scrivener when you want to enter information that isn’t yet known, which can’t be known until the draft is compiled, or which may change. For instance, you may want to include the page number in the header or footer, the word count on your title page, or numbers after your chapter titles. Until you compile your draft, Scrivener doesn’t know what pages will be present in the final manuscript or which text documents will be included, so it would be difficult for Scrivener to maintain a live representation of such information in your text, but it’s not ideal to have to re-type these things every time they change. The solution is to use placeholder tags—these are tags that you can type anywhere in Scrivener (in the main text, the titles, in the title prefix and suffix fields of the Formatting tab in the Compile window, and so on), which will be replaced with specific information in the compiled document. For instance, if you enter the tag <$wc>, when you compile the text, this tag will be replaced with the word count of the text.
Generally, you won’t want to litter your text with placeholder tags. Rather, they are intended to be useful for setting up word count statistics on title pages and setting up the Compile options (for instance, the auto-number tags can be added in the title settings of the Formatting tab of the Compile window to generate automatic chapter titles and numbers—take a look at some of the project templates that come with Scrivener for examples). You don’t have to use placeholder tags at all, of course, and they are a rather advanced feature, but as there are times when you may find them useful, provided below is a complete list of the placeholder tags you can use in Scrivener for Windows.
Statistics
You can insert these into the document text via the menu Edit > Insert.
<$wc>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total word count
of the text currently being compiled.
<$wc50>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total word count
of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest 50
words.
<$wc100>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total word count
of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest 100
words.
<$wc500>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total word count
of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest 500
words.
<$wc1000>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total word count
of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest 1000
words.
<$cc>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total character
count of the text currently being compiled.
<$cc50>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total character
count of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest
50 characters.
<$cc100>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total character
count of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest
100 characters.
<$cc500>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total character
count of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest
500 characters.
<$cc1000>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with the total character
count of the text currently being compiled, rounded to the nearest
1000 characters.
Auto-Numbering
You can insert most of these into the document text via the menu Edit > Insert. They can also be used in a title prefix or suffix, set in compile's Formatting pane.
<$n>
Gets replaced with Arabic numerals during the Compile process. The
number is incremented each time a <$n> tag is encountered in
the text, so “<$n>, <$n>, <$n>” would
become “1, 2, 3” in the compiled text.
<$sn>
The same as <$n> but intended to be used for sub-numbering.
The count restarts each time an <$n> tag is encountered.
Thus, “<$n> (<$sn>, <$sn>), <$n>
(<$sn>, <$sn>)” would become “1 (1, 2), 2
(1, 2)” in the compiled text.
<$r>
Gets replaced with lowercase Roman numerals during the Compile
process. The number is incremented each time a <$r> tag is
encountered in the text, so “<$r>, <$r>,
<$r>” would become “i, ii, iii” in the
compiled text.
<$R>
Gets replaced with uppercase Roman numerals during the Compile
process. The number is incremented each time a <$R> tag is
encountered in the text, so “<$R>, <$R>,
<$R>” would become “I, II, III” in the
compiled text.
<$w>
Gets replaced with numbers as lowercase words (using the current
language settings) during the Compile process. The number is
incremented each time a <$w> tag is encountered in the text,
so “<$w>, <$w>, <$w>” would become
“one, two, three” in the compiled text.
<$t>
Gets replaced with numbers as title-case words (using the current
language settings) during the Compile process. The number is
incremented each time a <$t> tag is encountered in the text,
so “<$t>, <$t>, <$t>” would become
“One, Two, Three” in the compiled text.
<$W>
Gets replaced with numbers as uppercase words (using the current
language settings) during the Compile process. The number is
incremented each time a <$W> tag is encountered in the text,
so “<$W>, <$W>, <$W>” would become
“ONE, TWO, THREE” in the compiled text.
<$hn>
Gets replaced during the Compile process with hierarchical
numbering based on the level of the document in which the tag
occurs relative to the Draft folder or compile group (depending on
the current compile settings). So occurrences of the <$hn>
tag in the second document in the Draft folder may get replaced
with the number “2”; occurrences of the tag in the
third subdocument of the eighth document in the Draft folder may be
replaced with “8.3”.
Restarting auto-numbering streams: <$rst>
Place <$rst> immediately before any of the auto-numbering
tags to restart the numbering. So, for instance, “<$w>,
<$w>, <$w>, <$rst><$w>, <$w>”
would become “one, two, three, one, two” in the
compiled text.
Current Date and Time
These tags can be inserted anywhere in the project, including the header and footer, set in compile's Page Settings.
<$shortdate>
Gets replaced with the current date during the Compile process,
using the short date format defined in the user’s system
regional settings.
<$longdate>
Gets replaced with the current date during the Compile process,
using the long date format defined in the user’s system
regional settings.
<$longtime>
Gets replaced with the current time during the Compile process,
using the long time format defined in the user’s system
regional settings.
User & Project Information
These tags can be inserted anywhere in the project, including the header and footer, set in compile's Page Settings.
<$surname>
Gets replaced with the user’s surname or last name during the
Compile process. The information is taken from the “Project
Properties” in the Project > Meta-Data Settings panel or,
if that is blank, from the user’s Windows account name. If
the tag appears in uppercase, the surname will be uppercased
too.
<$forename>
Gets replaced with the user’s forename or firstname name
during the Compile process. The information is taken from the
“Project Properties” in the Project > Meta-Data
Settings panel or, if that is blank, from the user’s Windows
account name. If the tag appears in uppercase, the forename will be
uppercased too.
<$fullname>
Gets replaced with the user’s full name during the Compile
process. The information is taken from the “Project
Properties” in the Project > Meta-Data Settings panel or,
if that is blank, from the user’s Windows account name. If
the tag appears in uppercase, the user’s name will be
uppercased too.
<$compilegroup>
Gets replaced with the name of the group currently being compiled
(as selected in the “Contents” pane of the Compile
sheet). If the tag appears in uppercase, the name will be
uppercased too.
<$projecttitle>
Gets replaced with the project name during the Compile process. The
project name is taken from the file name of the Scrivener
project.
<$abbr_title>
Gets replaced with the abbreviated project name during the Compile
process. The abbreviated project name is taken from the
“Project Properties” in the Project > Meta-Data
Settings panel or, if that is blank, from the file name of the
Scrivener project. If the tag appears in uppercase, the abbreviated
project name will be uppercased too.
Page Numbers
These tags can be inserted anywhere in the project, including the header and footer, set in compile's Page Settings.
<$p>
Gets replaced with the current page number during the Compile
process.
When used in the main text and it has an internal document link
associated with it, the <$p> tag will be replaced with the
page number on which the linked document appears if possible (for
RTF and for DOC, DOCX, PDF and Print when using Microsoft Word
export converters).
<$pagecount>
Gets replaced with the page count. Note that this will count all
pages, even when the first page is set to not show the header or
footer and not to be counted.