Free tools · Ebooks and book files
Manuscript checker
Word files collect things you can't see: indents typed with the Tab key, lines broken by hand, empty paragraphs doing the job of page breaks, a tracked change nobody accepted. They come out as uneven indents, odd gaps and missing chapters once the book is formatted. Drop in your manuscript and see them all before you start, with what to do about each.
Checked in your browser: your manuscript isn't uploaded and nothing is kept. Free for members.
No file to hand? (three chapters in Word from The Signal by R. S. Breed).
What it looks for
- Tracked changes and comments still in the file, and highlighted text.
- Indents made with tabs or spaces, line breaks inside paragraphs, empty paragraphs used for spacing, double spaces.
- Straight and curly quotes mixed, ellipses and dashes written different ways, hyphens used as dashes.
- Scene breaks in more than one style, chapter numbers missing or doubled, chapter headings in different styles.
- Characters you can't see or that won't print: zero-width spaces, the "�" left by a bad conversion.
Then
Everything here is a prompt to check, not a rule: a poem may want its line breaks. When it's tidy, make your book files from it, or take it to your formatter.
Written a book? List it free.
Your cover, blurb and store links, a first chapter readers can try, and numbers on where they stop. Host your advance copies free too.