Style Checks
The Checks page in the Revise room looks for the habits in your prose that you want to watch. Turn on the checks you want in the column beside the page, then choose Check the manuscript. Or choose Project > Check Style (⇧⌘L).
Reading with the checks
Revise ▸ Checks shows a chapter at a time, as it reads, with what the checks found underlined. Each check's count for the chapter is beside it in the column; use the arrows at the top, or the chapter menu, to go to another chapter. Quotation marks that are never closed and common slips are underlined as soon as you open a chapter.
Choose an underline to see what caught the checker's eye. Every result is a passage to look at again, not a mistake:
- Add to margin keeps it as a comment on the passage, to deal with in Write.
- Leave it hides it; it doesn't come back for that passage.
- Open in Write opens the scene with the passage selected.
- A slip that can be corrected, such as three full stops for an ellipsis, offers Fix instead.
To hide a check's underlines without turning it off, untick it in the column. To see every check's results for the whole book, choose As a list at the top right.
Built-in checks
The checks are off until you turn them on, and the settings are saved with the project.
| Check | Finds |
|---|---|
| Repeated words | The same word, or forms of it (walk, walked), close together or three times in a paragraph. Names and common words are ignored. |
| Filter verbs | "She saw", "he felt", "I noticed" and other verbs that put a character between the reader and the scene. Dialogue is ignored. |
| Dialogue tags | Scenes where most speech is tagged, and tags with adverbs ("said softly") or verbs other than "said" and "asked" ("hissed", "growled"). |
| Overused words | Crutch words and stock gestures (nodded, sighed) used more than usual, and descriptive words a scene uses far more than the rest of the book. |
| Tense | A sentence in the present tense in a scene told in the past ("He says nothing"), or the other way round, dialogue aside — and a scene told in a different tense from the rest of the book. A present-tense scene reaching back in time ("He moved here years ago") is left alone. |
Your own rules
Teach Five Rooms a habit of your own by showing it examples. For instance, you might tend to give an image and then explain it.
- Select a passage that shows the habit and choose Format > Add Selection as Style Example…. On iPad and iPhone, use Mark as style example. Or choose Teach it a habit of yours in Revise ▸ Checks.
- Name the rule and add three to six short examples. Add Editor Selection adds the selected passage.
- Check the manuscript.
Five Rooms finds the passages most like your examples. On a device with Apple Intelligence, the on-device model then reads each one and keeps only those that fit the rule. Without it, you see the 12 closest passages. Your text never leaves your device.
Refine a rule from its results: Yes, that's it adds the passage as another example, and Not this adds it as a counterexample. A rule's passages are underlined in green.