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Lesson 2 - Customizing the Appearance of Text on Twine

This lesson will cover some of the text customization options available in Twine, allowing you to make your stories look pretty.

Table of Contents

Lesson Objectives

  • Edit the format of our story’s text

Lesson Video

The following video demonstrates each of the steps outlined below in text.

View original here.

Text Styles

To apply some text styles to your text…

  • Highlight the text you’d like to apply the styling to.
  • Open up the Styles menu.
  • Select the styling you’d like.
    text styles selection

If all went according to plan, your text should be formatted similarly to the style itself. It should also be surrounded by a symbol at the start and end. Those signify the text style, similarly to how square brackets [[ ]] signify a link, so they won’t be seen in the game itself.

Additional Text Styles

If bold, italic, strikethrough, and superscript aren’t enough, there’s an extra menu with a lot more options.

  • Highlight the text you’d like to apply the styling to.
  • Open up the Styles menu.
  • Click on More Styles.
    selecting more text styles button
  • Create the text style you’d like and click Add.
    additional text styles with example text

You can scroll down to see more options for the text styles.

There’s lots of customization available in this menu, allowing for font variants, underlines, strikes, superscripts, subscripts, outlines, letter spacing, flips, stretches, and animations.

text styles example

Colours

If you’d like to change the font colour or the colour of the text background…

  • Highlight the text you’d like to apply the colouring to.
  • Open up the Colours menu. choosing the colours button
  • Select the styling you’d like. selecting colours with example text

There’s a lot of customization here too, allowing for gradients and custom colour selection. Take some time to play around with these settings!

example using colours
Check out Geoffrey’s novel here!

Borders

Twine also allows you to add borders to text.

  • Highlight the text you’d like to apply the border to.
  • Open up the Borders menu. selecting the borders button
  • Select the styling you’d like. borders styling with example text

Being able to modify each side of the border allows for some interesting possibilities.

example using borders

Rotated Text

You can also rotate text!

  • Highlight the text you’d like to apply the rotation to.
  • Open up the Rotate text menu. selecting the rotations button
  • Select the styling you’d like. rotation styling with example text

Rotating text may seem a little niche, but there’s some really cool effects you can do with it.

example using rotations

Lists

Bulleted and numbered lists are another thing you can make.

  • Highlight the text you’d like to make a list item.
  • Open up the List and line items menu. selecting list and line items button
  • Select the list type you’d like.

example using list items

Alignment and Columns

Finally, the last text formatting option we’ll cover is alignment and columns.

Alignment

  • Highlight the text you’d like to change the alignment of.
  • Open up the Alignments and columns menu and select Alignment. selecting the alignment button
  • Adjust the placement and width of your text and select the text alignment. adjusting alignment with some example text

Columns

  • Do not highlight any text. Select an empty area.
  • Open up the Alignments and columns menu and select Columns. choosing the columns button
  • Adjust the number of columns and cell sizes. columns settings
  • Move your text into the designated text area created for you. moving our text into the columns

Twine allows for in-depth positioning and column editing that’s rarely found in other applications.

example using both alignment and columns

Key Points / Summary

  • There are many ways to customize text in Twine.