The Editor
Where the writing happens. This page covers everything from bold text to finding a word across the whole project.
The Format Bar
The two rows above the editor. Hide or show it with .
Top row
- Paragraph style: Normal, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Blockquote or Code Block.
- Font: serif fonts (Georgia, Times New Roman, Garamond, Palatino, Merriweather, Lora, EB Garamond, Libre Baskerville, Crimson Pro, Playfair Display), sans-serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Inter, Lato, the system font) and Courier New.
- Size: 8 to 72 pt.
- Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Superscript, Subscript. Hover over any button to see its shortcut.
- Text color and highlight swatches, and Custom. See Colors.
Bottom row
- Alignment: left, center, right, justify.
- Bullet list and Numbered list.
- Decrease / Increase indent: nests a list item, or moves a paragraph's left edge in steps (up to eight).
- Line spacing: 1.0, 1.15, 1.5, 2.0 or 2.5, for the paragraphs you've selected.
- Horizontal rule, a table grid (pick up to 8 × 8), and the Resume Note pin.
Selecting text also shows a small bar with bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and alignment, right where you're working.
Everything on the Format Bar is also in the menu.
Paragraphs and indents
- Tab at the start of a paragraph adds a half-inch first-line indent; Shift+Tab or Backspace removes it. Pressing Enter carries the indent onto the next paragraph, and new scenes start indented.
- Quotes and dashes become typographic as you type: straight quotes turn into curly ones, and two hyphens into a dash. Nothing else is changed for you: there's no autocorrect and no autocomplete.
- (Ctrl+\) removes formatting from the selection.
- (Ctrl+Shift+V) pastes text without its original fonts and colors.
Colors and highlights
- Text colors: black, red, orange, green, blue and purple, plus a button that resets to the normal text color.
- Highlights: yellow, green, cyan, pink and orange. Click an active highlight's swatch again to remove it.
- Custom opens a color picker with a hex box. Choose Text or Highlight to apply the color and save it to that palette for this project (up to eight of each). Right-click a saved color to apply it either way, edit it or remove it.
and open the same picker.
The right-click menu
- On a misspelled word: up to five suggestions, Add to Dictionary and Ignore All (for this session).
- Cut, Copy and Paste. Paste uses whatever you copied most recently, keeping formatting when you copied from Ravenburst.
- Inline Comment / Note (with text selected) and Resume Note.
- Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough; Normal and Heading 1–3; lists, Indent and Outdent.
- Inside a table: add or delete rows and columns, delete the table, and copy the table with or without its contents (then Paste Table elsewhere).
- For the word under the pointer: a dictionary definition, synonyms and antonyms. These work offline.
Inserting
The menu has:
- Image…, Horizontal Rule, Page Break and Table…
- Special Characters: em dash, en dash, ellipsis, non-breaking space, curly double and single quotes, ©, ®, ™ and §.
- Inline Comment / Note (Ctrl+Shift+K) and Footnote (Ctrl+Alt+F).
- Current Date: June 15, 2026, 15 June 2026, 06/15/2026 or 15/06/2026.
- Current Time: 2:30 PM or 14:30.
- Word Count (inline): types the document's current word count, such as “2,431 words”.
Tables and images
Tables
adds a 3 × 3 table with a header row; the Format Bar's grid lets you pick the size. With the cursor in a table, a toolbar appears for adding and removing rows and columns, header and stripe colors, and borders (all, outer, inner or none, at 1, 2, 3 or 5 px). Drag a column edge to resize it. Enter moves to the cell below.
Images
accepts JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, BMP and SVG files. The image is stored inside your project, so moving the project file never breaks it. Click an image and drag its corner handle to resize it; the alignment buttons position it. Very large photos make the project file larger, so resize them first if you can.
Comments
- Select the text you want to comment on.
- Choose (Ctrl+Shift+K) or right-click → Inline Comment / Note.
- Type the note and press Enter (Shift+Enter for a new line).
Commented text is highlighted. Click it to Edit, Resolve (it turns gray and crossed out) or Delete the note. Comments are never exported.
Footnotes
(Ctrl+Alt+F) adds a numbered marker at the cursor and a matching note in the Notes area at the bottom of the document, where you type the note.
The numbers you see while writing are set when each footnote is inserted. Exports number them afresh in reading order, so the finished file is always 1, 2, 3… See how each format prints them.
Resume notes
A resume note is a 📍 pin you leave for yourself where you stopped: “pick up here, fix the timeline”. Press Ctrl+Shift+B, click the pin on the Format Bar, or right-click → Resume Note, then type what to pick up. Click a pin later to edit or delete it. Pins never appear in exports.
Separately, Ravenburst remembers where you were in every document and returns you to that spot when you open it again. If you come back after a break of 15 minutes or more, a Welcome back banner says what you were working on.
Find and replace
- Ctrl+F opens the find bar for this document, and Ctrl+H (⌘+Shift+H on a Mac) opens it with replace. It shows the number of matches; Ctrl+G and Ctrl+Shift+G move between them. The Aa button makes the search match capitals exactly. Replace and Replace All work on this document.
- Ctrl+Shift+F searches the whole project, ignoring capitals: manuscript, notes, reference, characters' text and more, but not Templates or Trash. Results are listed by document, most matches first, with a snippet; click one to open it. There's no replace across the project.
The find bar searches each run of formatting separately, so a phrase that's half italic may not be found as a whole.
Spelling and word lookup
- Spelling is checked as you type, in US English. Misspelled words get a red underline; right-click for suggestions.
- Turn it on or off with the ABC button in the status bar or .
- Add to Dictionary keeps a word for good, in every project. Manage your words in (also ).
- Your characters' and places' names are always treated as correctly spelled, without adding them to the dictionary.
- The right-click menu shows a definition, synonyms and antonyms for the word under the pointer.
Text cleanup
works on the open document and reports what it changed:
- Replace Multiple Spaces with Single Space
- Remove Empty Lines Between Paragraphs
- Delete Struck-Through Text: removes everything you've crossed out. Handy if you strike out text while revising instead of deleting it.
Each can be undone with Ctrl+Z.
Zoom, line numbers and the status bar
- Zoom: 50% to 200%, with Ctrl+= / Ctrl+-, Ctrl + mouse wheel, , or the − and + buttons in the status bar (double-click the percentage to reset).
- Line numbers () number every line as it appears on screen, including wrapped lines. Useful for workshops and proofreading.
- The status bar shows, from left to right: zoom, spellcheck, the document's word count (and the selection's), save status, the project's word count and target progress, short messages from the app, backup status, the document's own target if it has one, and a theme button that cycles Light, Dark, High Contrast and System.