Chapter View Modes: By Group or By Scene
Sometimes you want to compare one thing across a whole chapter. Other times you want everything about a single scene in one place. When a chapter holds several scenes, Penpoint can arrange it either way: By Group, which is the default, or By Scene.
The button that swaps between them sits on the strip across the top of the chapter page, beside New Scene and Edit. It has a small icon of two stacked rows and reads View Mode: Group or View Mode: Scene, naming the view you're in.
By Group
The default arrangement groups content by block. Blocks are the boxes that make up a chapter page, and your layout is the set you've chosen for every chapter. One Description block holds every scene's description, one Characters block every scene's cast, and so on, each broken down by scene inside.
Reading four descriptions one after another tells you whether a chapter's shape is working, and a scene you haven't filled in yet sits there as a blank line, which is exactly what you want when you're checking what still needs doing.
By Scene
Here each scene gets its own section, with your layout repeated inside it. Use it when you want to know what happens in a given scene without hunting for the pieces. It reads the way the chapter reads: this happened, then this happened, then this happened.
Note: Both views show the same information and use the same layout you set up. Nothing is hidden in one and shown in the other, and switching between them changes nothing about your book. Pick whichever suits what you're doing right now.
On a chapter with only one scene, or when you've picked a single scene from the outline (the chapter list down the left), both arrangements look identical, so the page won't appear to change. The button stays put, ready for the moment you add a second scene.
The Whole Chapter Section
Story Arcs (the plot threads you follow across a book) and tags pinned to the chapter belong to the whole chapter rather than to any one scene. By Scene gathers them into a Whole Chapter section above the first scene; By Group keeps them under a Whole chapter heading inside the Story Arcs and Tags blocks. Tags on individual scenes stay with their scene.
Tip: In By Scene, click a scene's heading to fold it away, and click again to open it back up. Nothing inside is lost while it's folded, and Penpoint remembers which sections you left folded.
Tidying the View
At the right-hand end of that strip is a gear icon (hover it and it says View options) holding a Hide empty blocks option. Switch it on and blocks you haven't filled in drop out of sight: nothing is deleted, and switching it off brings them straight back. Story Arcs always stays, as does Calculate, which works a number out from two others and so always has something to show.
Everything reappears the moment you press Edit, so there's never a block you can't get at to fill in. In By Group a block only goes if it's empty for every scene, and empty lines inside a surviving block are tucked away too. In By Scene an empty scene keeps its heading and says so.
Where the Settings Live
Both are display settings: they change how things look, never what's inside a book. Penpoint carries them across every book you open and shares them with the Minipen (the reference sidebar beside your prose in Manuscript mode). The Minipen has no room for the button, so both settings live under its gear icon.
Which blocks appear in the first place is up to you: see Customizing Chapter Layout.