Chapter Scanner

The Chapter Scanner reads through your writing and finds mentions of characters, locations, items, and tags that you've already added to your book. It can also spot new names that might be story elements you haven't tracked yet. The scanner never changes your actual writing; it only updates your tracking lists and chapter connections.

Running a Scan

To run a scan:

• Right-click (or Ctrl+click on Mac) any chapter in the chapter list on the left (the sidebar that lists your chapters)
• Select Scan Chapter for Content (content here means character names, locations, items, and tags that appear in your writing)
• A brief explanation screen appears: click Scan Now to begin
• The scanner reads all scenes in the chapter and presents results for your review before making any changes

A progress bar shows how far along the scan is. When it finishes, you'll see results organized into sections. Any characters, locations, items, or tags already connected to this chapter are marked as Already linked so you can focus on what's new.

Connecting just means Penpoint will remember that this character (or location, item, or tag) appears in this chapter; it never changes your actual writing.

How It Works

The scanner looks for capitalized words and phrases in your prose that appear to be proper nouns: character names, place names, titles, and so on. It uses a few rules to separate real names from ordinary words that happen to be capitalized:

• Sentence starts are ignored. Words at the beginning of a sentence or a line of dialogue are capitalized by grammar rules, not because they are names. The scanner skips these positions when deciding what counts as a proper noun.
• Common words are filtered out. Words like "However," "Meanwhile," "English," and similar everyday words that are always capitalized are excluded automatically.
• Repetition matters. A name needs to appear more than once in your writing to be reported. One-off capitalized words are usually not story elements worth tracking.
• Multi-word names are combined. If "Jack" is almost always followed by "Allen," the scanner reports "Jack Allen" as a single name rather than two separate entries.
• Articles are preserved when consistent. If your text consistently says "the Dark Lord" rather than just "Dark Lord," the scanner keeps the article as part of the name.

The scanner also tries to guess whether each new discovery is a character, location, or item based on the words around it. For example, names that appear with dialogue tags ("said," "whispered") are likely characters, while names that appear with spatial words ("in," "near," "traveled to") are likely locations. This guess pre-selects the type dropdown for you, but you can always change it.

Understanding Results

Matches Found

Names Penpoint is quite sure about are already selected for you, so just uncheck any you don't want to connect to this chapter.

Possible Matches

These are names Penpoint is less sure about: usually a single mention or only a partial name match. Look these over carefully before selecting them.

New Discoveries

These are names found in your writing that don't match anything in your book yet. For each one, you can:

• Pick from the menu what it is (Character, Location, Item, or Tag)
• Edit the name before adding it to your book
• Match it to something you've already created using the chain-link button (two linked loops) to the right of each name (handy for aliases like "The Dark Lord" matching "Sauron")

Quick Add

Use the Quick Add button to add something the scanner didn't catch. Type a name, pick from the menu what it is, and optionally match it to an existing character, location, item, or tag, all without leaving the scanner.

Applying Results

Check the boxes next to anything you want to connect or create, then click Apply Selected. The scanner will:

• Connect existing characters, locations, items, and tags to the chapter
• Add new names you selected to the appropriate tracking list (for example, add a new character to your character list, or a new location to your locations list)

These new additions are only added to your tracking lists, not inserted into your writing. And if the scanner got something wrong, you can always delete anything it creates. No harm done.

If nothing is selected, a Continue button appears instead, letting you proceed to the completion screen without making changes.

Aliases and Ignoring Results

You can teach the scanner to recognize aliases (what you might think of as nicknames) for your characters. For example, if your character Sauron is sometimes called "The Dark Lord," the scanner will learn to connect both names. These aliases are saved right away and remembered for every scan going forward.

You can review and remove saved aliases in the Aliases section at the bottom of the results screen.

Ignoring a result tells the scanner to stop suggesting that name in future scans. Ignoring a result doesn't delete anything; it just hides the suggestion. Click the eye icon with a line through it (meaning "hide") on any result to ignore it, or click the Ignored heading to expand it and bring back anything you previously ignored.