Managing Tags
Tags are universal markers that work across everything in your book: characters, items, locations, chapters, and notes. Think of them as colored labels that help you group and find related content instantly.
Available Tags:
Why Use Tags?
Traits belong to a single character. Tags don't. Tag a character with "Rebels" and a location with "Rebels," then view everything Rebellion-related in one place on the Tags page.
Common Tag Uses
Tags shine when tracking concepts that span multiple areas of your story:
- Factions & Affiliations: "Royal Family", "Magic Order", "Merchant Guild"
- Story arcs: "Act 1", "Rebellion Arc", "Resolution"
- Themes & Motifs: "Nature Symbolism", "Political Intrigue", "Prophecy"
- Status tracking: "Needs Development", "Ready for Review", "Plot Critical"
- Character roles: "Protagonist", "Antagonist", "Comic Relief"
Tip: Tags are book-wide. Create them once, use them everywhere. A tag created while editing a character is immediately available for locations, items, chapters, and notes. In a series, that means the whole series: one set of tags shared across every Book.
Creating Tags
Add New Tag: Click the "Add New Tag" button to create a tag. Give it a name and select a color. Colors help you visually distinguish tags at a glance.
Display Order: Choose how tags are sorted throughout the app:
- Most Used: Tags you use frequently appear first (default)
- A-Z: Alphabetical order for easy lookup
- Recently Created: Newest tags appear first
This setting affects tag ordering everywhere in Penpoint, not just in the Tags Manager.
Tag Groups
Once you have more than a couple of dozen tags, a flat list stops being useful. Tag Groups let you file related tags together under a heading: "Factions", "Themes", "Draft Status". A group is only a filing cabinet. Putting a tag in one changes nothing about where that tag is already assigned, and a tag lives in one group at a time. Groups appear everywhere you pick or browse tags, not only on this page.
Create Tag Group: Click this button, name the group, and it appears as a section in your tag list. Tags you haven't filed anywhere sit in a section called Ungrouped at the bottom.
Putting Tags in a Group
Filing is safe to experiment with: nothing is deleted, and a tag in the wrong place just gets dragged somewhere else.
- Drag it: Pick up a tag and drop it anywhere inside a group's section. The whole section lights up as you hover over it. Drop a tag on the Ungrouped section to pull it back out of its group, and let go away from any section to call the whole thing off.
- Use the menu: Hover over a tag and click the small folder button (rest on it and it says "Move to group"), then pick a group. The same menu offers "No group" to take a tag out of one, and "New group…" to make a group and file the tag into it in one step.
- Do a batch: Tick several tags and a dark bar appears above your tag list. Click Move to Group there to file all of them at once. Dragging any one of the ticked tags brings the rest with it.
- Set it when you create it: Once you have at least one group, the Create New Tag window (opened by Add New Tag) gains a Group dropdown, so a tag can go straight where it belongs.
Group Colors and Icons
Every group's heading carries a small row of buttons, faint until you hover over them, to rename the group, give it an icon, assign it a color, or delete it.
A group color takes over the display of every tag inside it, so a whole category reads as one block at a glance. Your own tag colors are kept, not overwritten: choose Remove group color from that same color button and every tag returns to the color you gave it. While the group color is in charge, each member tag's own color button is deliberately unavailable, since the group is deciding.
Collapsing and Reordering
Anywhere you pick tags, clicking a group's heading folds it away, and it stays folded everywhere else you pick tags until you open it again, including the next time you open Penpoint. A category you're not working on today stops taking up room on every character sheet and note. Headings don't fold here in the Tags Manager: this is where you organize groups, so they stay open.
To change the order groups appear in, drag a group up or down by the grip at the far left of its heading (the column of small dots). That order is used everywhere, and Ungrouped always sits last.
Deleting a Group
One of the two ways to delete a group reaches past the group and deletes the tags themselves, so the window spells out both outcomes and the tag count before you choose. Neither choice can be undone.
- Delete Group, Keep Tags: Only the heading goes. Every tag survives untouched, still attached to each character, chapter and note it was on. The tags simply become ungrouped.
- Delete Group and N Tags: The tags are deleted outright and removed from every character, item, location, chapter, scene, note and arc they were on.
An empty group is removed with a single Delete Group button, since there is nothing to decide.
Managing Tags
Hover over any tag card to reveal management options:
- Change Color: Click the color swatch to pick a new color
- Edit Name: Click the pencil icon to rename the tag
- Merge Tags: Combine two tags into one, preserving all assignments
- Move to group: File the tag into a Tag Group, or take it out of one
- Delete: Remove a tag from your book (removes from all assignments)
Merging Tags
If you've created duplicate tags or want to consolidate similar tags, merging moves all assignments from one tag to another, then deletes the source tag. For example, merging "Magic Users" into "Mages" will update all characters, locations, and other content to use "Mages" instead.
Note: When deleting a tag, you'll be prompted to either delete it permanently or merge it with another tag. Choose merge if you want to preserve the categorization under a different name.
Bulk Operations
Select multiple tags using the checkboxes (visible on hover) to perform actions on many tags at once:
- Set Color: Apply the same color to multiple tags for visual grouping
- Move to Group: File every selected tag into the same group at once
- Merge: Consolidate multiple tags into a single target tag
- Delete: Remove several tags at once, taking them off everything they were assigned to. You're asked to confirm first, and it can't be undone
Using Tags
Assign tags to any content by entering Edit mode and using the Tags Block. View all content with a specific tag in the Tags page, where you can filter by type (characters, items, locations, chapters, notes).
Best Practices
- Start with broad categories and add specific tags as your book develops
- Use consistent naming conventions (e.g., "Royal Family" not "Family Royal")
- Assign colors strategically. Similar tags can share colors, contrasting concepts use different colors
- Don't over-tag early; let your tagging system evolve with your story
- Wait until a pattern appears before making groups. Groups are worth it once a flat list gets hard to scan, not on day one
- Visit the Tags page regularly to discover unexpected connections
Learn More
- Tags Block - Learn about the Tags Block for assigning tags to characters
- Tags Viewer Page - Discover how to view all content associated with a specific tag