Five to learn first
There are about forty shortcuts in Quillard. You do not need forty. Five will carry you through a whole book, and the rest can wait until the day you want them.
- Save this book to a file
- ⌘S
- Find something
- ⌘F
- Undo — and undo the undo
- ⌘Zor⌘⇧Z
- Comment on what you have selected
- ⌘⇧M
- Show every shortcut there is
- ⌘/
The last one is the important one. MOD / opens the full list at any moment, so nothing here has to be memorised — it has to be findable. Learn that key and you have learned all of them.
MOD means ⌘ on a Mac and Ctrl on Windows and Linux. Everything below works the same on both; only that key changes. ⇧ is Shift and ⌥ is Option, which is Alt on a PC.
Nothing here has to be memorised. It has to be findable.
Getting around
A book of forty sections is a lot of clicking. These four are the ones that stop it being one.
- Jump to any book, chapter, section or scene
- ⌘P
- Every work you have, as jackets
- ⌘⇧B
- Show or hide the shelf
- ⌘\
- Find in this section, this book, or all books
- ⌘F
- The next match · the one before
- ⌘Gor⌘⇧G
MOD P is the one to learn. Start typing part of a chapter name, a section title or a line you remember writing, and it takes you there. It searches the whole shelf, not just the book you have open, so it works as well for “where did I put that scene” as for “open chapter nine”.
Find is three searches behind one key: this section, this book, or everything you have ever written in Quillard. The scope sits in the search bar; the key is the same either way.
Marking up the words
The ordinary ones are where you expect them, and the headings are a row of numbers.
- Bold · Italic
- ⌘Bor⌘I
- Body text · Heading 1, 2, 3
- ⌘⌥0…⌘⌥3
- Link the selection
- ⌘K
- Open a link you have written
- ⌘click
- Highlight the selection, or turn the highlighter on
- ⌘⇧H
- Bigger type · smaller type
- ⌘+or⌘−
The heading keys are worth a moment. MOD ⌥ 0 is body text and MOD ⌥ 1 through MOD ⌥ 3 are the three heading levels — so the number you press is the level you get, and pressing zero puts it back to ordinary prose.
Bigger and smaller type change how the page looks to you, not the manuscript. Nothing you press here affects what a reader or an export sees; that lives in the Type controls.
Editing by the sentence, not the letter
This is the set most writing software does not have, and the one most worth your time. Prose is made of words and sentences, so the keys work on words and sentences.
- Delete the word before the caret
- ⇧⌫
- Delete the sentence before the caret
- ⌘⌥⌫
- Go to the start · the end of the paragraph
- ⌘⌥←or⌘⌥→
- A new paragraph below, from anywhere in the line
- ⌘⏎
- Empty the quotes or brackets around the caret
- ⌘⌫
Two of those deserve explaining. MOD ⏎ starts a new paragraph below the one you are in without your having to reach the end of it first — useful when a thought arrives mid-sentence and you want it on its own line before it goes.
MOD ⌫ empties whatever pair of marks the caret sits inside: put it between the quotation marks and press it, and the speech goes but the quotes stay, ready for what you actually meant to write. Press it a second time and the marks go too. It is a small thing that saves a fiddly selection every time a line of dialogue turns out wrong.
Screenplays
Screenplays have their own set, because a screenplay is a sequence of element types and moving between them is most of the typing.
- The next element · the one before
- Tabor⇧Tab
- Scene · Action · Character · Parenthetical · Dialogue · Transition
- ⌘1…⌘6
Tab cycles in the order a scene is usually written, so most of the time it is the only key you need. The numbers are there for when you want to jump straight to an element out of order.
Working with someone else
Comments, tracked changes and sync each have one key, and they are the three you will use on a second draft.
- Comment on the selection
- ⌘⇧M
- Turn Suggesting on or off
- ⌘⇧T
- Sync this book
- ⌘⌥S
- Save this book to a .quill file
- ⌘S
- Copy this section as Markdown · as HTML
- ⌘⇧Cor⌘⌥C
Suggesting is the one to be deliberate about. With it on, nothing you type overwrites anything — it arrives as a tracked change with your name on it, to be accepted or rejected later. It opens off every session, on purpose, so tracking changes is always a choice you made today rather than one you forgot you made last month.
Quieting the room
Three keys change how much of the app you can see, and one key brings it all back.
- Focus mode — dim everything but this sentence
- ⌘⇧F
- Zen — the page and nothing else
- ⌘⇧D
- Typewriter scrolling — keep the line where your eyes are
- View→Typewriter
- Back to writing, from anywhere
- Esc
Esc is the one key in Quillard that never does anything clever. It closes a menu, leaves a search, comes out of Zen, and stops the tour. If you are ever unsure what a key just did, Esc will put you back.
Every one of these is on one sheet, and MOD / is how you get to it.
That sheet lives under Help → Keyboard shortcuts as well, and it is worth opening once a week for the first month. You will find you have already learned six of them without meaning to.