The keycap bar
The format bar is a keyboard, not a ribbon. Raised keys, split keys that open a menu on hover, and a solid accent colour when something is on. Every key reflects the caret: put the cursor inside a bold word and the B lights up.
Bold is ⌘B, italic ⌘I, link ⌘K. The paragraph menu on the left holds headings and body text, verse for poetry, and the full screenplay set — scene heading, action, character, parenthetical, dialogue.
Type, measure and the page
Family, size, line height, measure and paragraph spacing are all yours, and an arrangement you like can be saved as a preset.
Measure — how wide the text runs — matters more than font size for how tiring a page is to read. Sixty to seventy characters a line is the old rule, and the default sits near it.
Pictures and links
Pictures go into the manuscript as blocks of their own, with the caption written underneath, and they travel into every export. Drag one onto the page, or use Insert.
Links are ⌘K on selected text, and they survive into Word, EPUB, Markdown and PDF.
Speaking instead of typing
Dictation is local. The speech never leaves the machine — there is no service behind it, which is why it works with the wifi off.
Say “new paragraph” and it does. ⌘D starts and stops it, and the keyboard pauses while it listens so a stray keystroke cannot land in the middle of a sentence.
The quiet corrections
Quillard fixes a small, specific set of things as you type: known typos, transposed letters, words a single edit away from a real one, run-together words, and a stray key in the middle of a word. Sentence capitals and spacing are handled quietly. One sweep tidies doubled and orphaned spaces across a whole section.
What it does not do is write for you. There is no assistant in the writing room, and that is a position rather than a gap — see the last volume if you want the argument for it.
Anything it gets wrong about your names or your house spellings can be taught: Config holds a list of your own rules, and they always win.
What the bottom of the screen is telling you
The status bar counts words for the section, the chapter and the book, plus characters, reading time and pages. Tracked changes and open comments sit on the right, and both are clickable.
