Spellcheck & Autocorrect

Penpoint checks your spelling as you write and can automatically convert common patterns: straight quotes into curly quotes, or double dashes into em dashes. Manage everything in Settings > Spellcheck & Autocorrect.

Turning Spellcheck On and Off

Use the Spellcheck section in Settings to enable or disable spell-checking. When disabled, all red underlines disappear immediately. When re-enabled, your manuscript is re-checked.

Your Characters, Locations, and Items Are Recognized Automatically

Penpoint automatically recognizes the names of your characters, locations, and items, including character aliases. You won't see red underlines on "Aragorn" or "Rivendell" as long as they exist in your book. When you add a new character, location, or item, the spellchecker picks it up automatically.

Custom Dictionary

For words that aren't character or location names (slang, made-up terminology, or anything else specific to your writing), add them to your custom dictionary. There are two ways:

• From the editor: Right-click a red-underlined word and choose "Add to Dictionary"
• From Settings: Type the word into the search box in the Custom Dictionary section and press Enter or click Add

To remove a word, hover over it in the dictionary list and a small delete button (X) appears on the left. Click it to remove the word; it will be spell-checked again going forward.

Each word row also has a small paper-airplane (send) icon. Click it to suggest that word to Penpoint for the Authors Dictionary, a shared list of fiction-writing words covered just below.

Penpoint Authors Dictionary

Fiction is full of words a standard dictionary marks as misspelled: "sigil," "wyvern," "grimoire," and countless others. The Penpoint Authors Dictionary is a curated set of words common to fiction writing, added alongside the English dictionary so fewer genre terms end up underlined in red. It is on by default, and it covers all your books at once, so you never set it up book by book.

This is just an extra word list downloaded to your app. It never reads or sends anything from your books. Penpoint keeps it current for you, so it grows over time on its own, and you can turn it off any time in the Spellcheck settings. It works for English; in another language it simply stays inactive until a list exists for that one.

Missing a word you use often? You can suggest it, and we add the ones that fit. Contributing to the Authors Dictionary walks through how.

Multiple Languages

Penpoint ships with English built in. To write in another language, use the Language section in Settings to search for and download additional dictionaries. Over 50 languages are available. Once downloaded, click a language name to switch to it. Penpoint remembers your language choice, so you only need to set it once.

To remove a downloaded language, it must not be the one you're currently using. Switch to a different language first; the old language will then appear in the list below with a trash can icon you can click to delete it.

Autocorrect

The Autocorrect card lets you control three automatic text replacements that happen as you type.

Dash Behavior

Choose how Penpoint handles dashes when you type hyphens in a row:

• Standard (default): Typing -- inserts an em dash (—), the long dash most writers use for interruptions and asides. This matches the behavior in Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
• Typographer: Typing -- inserts an en dash (–), the shorter dash used for ranges like "pages 10–20." Type --- to get an em dash instead.

Smart Quotes

When enabled, Penpoint automatically converts straight quote marks into curly (typographic) quotes as you type, so "hello" becomes "hello" and 'world' becomes 'world'. If you need straight quotes (for example, when writing code or working in a language that doesn't use curly quotes), you can disable this.

Auto-Capitalize Sentences

Turn this on and Penpoint capitalizes the first letter of every sentence for you, so a long writing session never breaks stride on the Shift key. It applies everywhere you write: your manuscript, your notes, and the writing fields on your character, location, item, chapter, and arc pages. It is off by default.

Changed your mind about a capital? Press Backspace right after it and the lowercase letter comes back. That window is one keystroke wide: type another letter, or move your cursor, and Backspace goes back to deleting.

A period doesn't always end a sentence, so Penpoint leaves the next word alone when it recognizes one that doesn't. Abbreviations such as "Mr.", "Dr.", "e.g." and "etc." are covered, along with decimals, web addresses, and ellipses, so "He paused... then walked on" stays exactly as you wrote it.