What Preserved Lines does
Most paragraphs in a novel reflow. When the typesetter sets your book at 5.5×8.5 with a particular font and measure, the words break across lines wherever the line fills up. That is what you want for prose. But there are passages where each authored line should sit exactly where you put it.
Preserved Lines is a block format that keeps your line breaks verbatim through every export — PDF, EPUB, and DOCX. Inside the block, every line you author with Enter renders as a discrete line in the published book.
When to use it
Preserved Lines is built for any passage where the line layout itself is part of the meaning. Common cases:
How to insert a Preserved Lines block
Three equivalent paths:
- Type your lines first as normal paragraphs. Select all the lines you want preserved. Click the Preserved Lines icon (three stacked rows) in the floating toolbar. The selected paragraphs collapse into a single Preserved Lines block with each authored line preserved as a line break.
- Place your cursor where you want the block and press Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + L. The current paragraph converts to a Preserved Lines block.
- Select text, right-click, choose Format ▸ Preserved Lines from the menu.
If you select multiple paragraphs and apply Preserved Lines, Bookshaper merges them into ONE block with line breaks between them — almost always what you want for poetry, lyrics, or parallel-narration passages.
Writing inside the block
Once you are inside a Preserved Lines block, your keyboard behaves slightly differently from a normal paragraph:
How to exit the block
- Cmd/Ctrl + Enter starts a new paragraph immediately after the block, leaving the existing lines intact. Distinct from plain Enter (which adds a line within the block) so it will not fire accidentally.
- Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + L while the cursor is inside the block toggles it off, converting the block back to regular paragraphs.
- Click on any paragraph outside the block.
- Press the Down arrow at the last authored line to step past the block boundary.
Formatting controls
Open the Format section in the sidebar. Under Body Matter, you will find a Preserved Lines target with the same typography, spacing, and alignment controls every body element has, plus a new Line Block panel.
Export behavior across formats
EPUB caveat: reflowable EPUB readers let the reader control font size and screen width. If a reader enlarges the text enough that one of your authored lines no longer fits on a single line of their screen, the wrap uses the hanging indent — but the wrap point itself is not under your control. The ORDER of your lines is always preserved; the exact wrap within each line is at the reader's mercy. This is a fundamental EPUB constraint, not a Bookshaper limitation. For a truly fixed Kindle experience, export PDF and run it through Amazon's free Kindle Create app to produce a print-replica KPF.