Insert a paragraph into concatenate function?

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Is there a better way than my below workaround to insert a new paragraph into a concatenate or format function?

In my case, I’m creating a summary scene breakdown of a screenplay. I have a main table that keeps track of minutia like Scene Number, Location, Time of Day, Description, Props, Characters, etc. Then I’m using a linked table view which is an easy to read summary to share with others. I want to have the Slugline and Description in one cell but as separate paragraphs. I can copy and paste separate paragraphs into cells but I can’t figure out how to generate new paragraphs with a formula. My workaround is to copy and paste a paragraph into a cell and then use that to concatenate between the Slugline and Description (see below). Can anyone think of a better way of doing this so that I don’t need to maintain a Paragraph column?

ParagraphQuestion
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@Phil_Hamilton For now, this is how you do it (I think).

I create that line return in an assumptions table on one row only and call that row “newline”.

Then, when concatenating in various places throughout the doc, I access that “newline” character by using @ to reference that row. Like this:

=Concatenate(“lorem”, @newline.value, “ipsum”)

Got the idea from @mallika .

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Awesome! I got it working for me. That is way slicker than what I had. Thanks, @Ander!

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@Phil_Hamilton I also have a row called “newline2” for doing double line returns. :crazy_face:

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Hey, related question here, is there a way to do a standard screenplay format in coda?

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Hey Ian – First off, welcome to the community! Second, to your question…

I’d say the short answer is not really. Long answer: you could write in the blank canvas and use spaces to format it yourself. But there’s no point in that. Also, you could come up with a table that could help you format the text. A simple example, every row could have a select control for slugline, description, dialogue. Then a cell for the text. THEN outside of that you could have a formula that takes that info and formats your screenplay.

I think Coda is better for “melting” a screenplay. If you have the text file for it, you could plug that in, apply some formula or action to it that could break it down into a table like described above. The goal here would be to analyze the script for recurring locations, count lines of dialogue per character. You could come up with smart ways to pluck out all kinds of data.

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Alternatively, you can use the Character formula with the unicode 10 (U+000A) to yield a newline character. Something like

Concatenate(“lorem”, Character(10), “ipsum”)