Scripture references in introductions

Question

In our project’s book introductions, we point the reader to certain passages using Scripture references. Since all the references are internal to that particular book, we don’t include the book name or book abbreviation in the Scripture reference. If we have a simple reference (such as 11.4), Paratext has no problem with it. But if we include a complex reference (such as 7.3-8), Paratext flags it as “invalid medial punctuation”. I have tripled checked both the Scripture reference settings and the Number settings, and they appear to be set correctly. If I add the book abbreviation (Eph 7.3-8), it works fine. So I suspect Paratext isn’t recognizing it as a Scripture reference since the book abbreviation isn’t included, and is using the number settings. If I use either the period or the dash alone (7.3 or 3-8), it’s not flagged as an error. It appears that Paratext doesn’t like the “number/medial punctuation/number/medial punctuation/number” format. Though it’s happy with it if I put a book name in front of it. We’d really like to keep this Scripture reference format in our book introductions, but it would also be nice to be able to run the check without this getting flagged as an error for each book of the New Testament.

Answer 1

To make it work properly, you need to mark the references as references using the proper USFM markup (e.g. \xt ... \xt*). So you might do something like:
\ip See the text in \xt 7.3-8\xt* for reference.

That will let Paratext know it’s a reference instead of a number, and will check it with the References Check instead of the Numbers Check.

Answer 2

You should wrap it in \xt … \xt*, unless it is part of an introductory outline. In that case, wrap it in \ior …\ior*. This allows for proper checking and may even provide links (one day) in the proper online system.

Blessings,