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.