Writing Content

Most of your work happens in the editor. Click a chapter in the list on the left to open it.

The middle of the screen is where you write. It behaves much like Microsoft Word or Google Docs — just start typing. Everything you type is saved automatically; there is no Save button.

In the rest of this tutorial we say "chapter", but articles use "sections" and the two are interchangeable.

The live preview

The right-hand pane is a real typeset PDF of the page you are on, regenerated as you write. It is not an approximation — it is the same rendering that comes out when you publish.

Its controls let you Zoom In and Zoom Out, step to the previous or next page, and Toggle Fullscreen. Two buttons underneath switch between Show Preview in Color and Show Preview in Grayscale, which is useful when you are checking how images will look in a black-and-white print run.

Drag the arrow on the divider to widen the preview when you want a closer look, and back again when you want more room to write.

Save status

A badge above the preview tells you where your work stands:

• Saved — everything is stored.
• Saving… — a save is in flight.
• Having Trouble Saving… — Inkwell cannot reach the server. Your work is held locally and sent when the connection returns, so it is safe to keep writing.
• Read Only — you do not have edit permission on this chapter. This is what collaborators with a Read or Frozen role see.

If your sign-in session expires — for instance in a tab left open after signing out elsewhere — a red banner appears here saying you are signed out, and editing pauses until you sign in again. Signing back in from any tab of the same browser resumes the tab automatically within a minute; nothing typed before the pause is lost.

You may also see a banner saying a new version of Inkwell is available; refresh the browser when convenient to pick it up. If your browser is running short of local storage, Inkwell warns you about that here too.

Statistics

Below the preview, Inkwell reports the current chapter's Grade Level — a Flesch-Kincaid estimate of reading level — along with the total Word Count and a split into body and notes word counts, so footnote-heavy chapters do not inflate the figure you care about.

Remove Chapter at the bottom deletes the chapter you are viewing. If you delete one by mistake, Insert → Restore Chapter in the chapter list brings it back.

Basic formatting

The toolbar across the top carries the usual marks:

Icon	Effect
	Bold Text
	Italic Text
	Underline
	Strikethrough Text
	Superscript Text
	Subscript Text
	Smallcaps Text

Small caps use the font's own small-capital letterforms when it has them. Most fonts do not include a small-caps design — the default, Latin Modern Roman, is one of them — and those get scaled capitals instead, matching what you see while you write. Scaled capitals really are capitals, so copying that text out of the PDF gives you ORIGIN rather than Origin. If that matters for your book, pick a font that has small caps of its own.

At the far left, Undo and Redo step back and forth through your changes.

Use the Link button to turn the selection into a link. Clicking it opens the link toolbar, where you type the URL:

The Change Case button converts the selection to Title Case, UPPERCASE, lowercase, or Sentence case — handy for fixing a heading in one step.

On the left rail sit Local Settings and Project Settings . Local Settings adjust whatever is selected right now; Project Settings apply to the whole book. Both have their own chapters.

The rest of the toolbar — figures, tables, footnotes, citations, index entries, and math — is covered in the chapters that follow.