# Writing Manuscripts

Alfred Scholar includes a full-featured rich text editor designed specifically for academic writing. Create manuscripts, insert citations from your library, and collaborate with your team - all in one place.

## Creating a manuscript

1. Click **Manuscripts** in the sidebar.
2. Click **New Manuscript**.
3. Enter a **title** for your manuscript (or leave it as "Untitled Manuscript" and change it later).
4. Click **Create**.

The editor opens immediately and you can start writing.

## The editor

Alfred Scholar's manuscript editor is a block-based rich text editor with everything you need for academic writing.

### Text formatting

The editor toolbar provides:

| Tool | What it does |
|------|-------------|
| **Headings** | Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 levels for document structure. |
| **Bold** | **Bold text** for emphasis. |
| **Italic** | *Italic text* for titles, emphasis, and species names. |
| **Underline** | Underlined text. |
| **Strikethrough** | ~~Struck-through text~~ for tracked changes. |
| **Superscript** | Superscript text for exponents and ordinals. |
| **Subscript** | Subscript text for chemical formulas and notation. |
| **Code** | Inline code formatting for computational methods. |

### Font controls

- **Font family** - Choose from Default, Arial, Calibri, Georgia, Times New Roman, or Verdana.
- **Font size** - Select from a range of sizes (8pt to 72pt).

### Structure and layout

| Tool | What it does |
|------|-------------|
| **Bullet list** | Unordered lists for items without sequence. |
| **Numbered list** | Ordered lists for steps, procedures, and ranked items. |
| **Blockquote** | Indented quotes for citing passages. |
| **Horizontal rule** | A divider line between sections. |
| **Text alignment** | Align text left, center, right, or justify. |

### Content elements

| Tool | What it does |
|------|-------------|
| **Link** | Add hyperlinks to text. |
| **Image** | Insert images from your uploaded manuscript images. |
| **Table** | Create and edit tables for data presentation (up to 8 rows and 8 columns). |
| **Citation** | Insert a citation from your citation library. |
| **Math** | Insert an inline or block equation with the **Σ** toolbar action. No need to write LaTeX by hand. |

### Keyboard shortcuts

Speed up your writing with keyboard shortcuts:

| Shortcut | Action |
|----------|--------|
| **Ctrl/Cmd + B** | Bold |
| **Ctrl/Cmd + I** | Italic |
| **Ctrl/Cmd + U** | Underline |
| **Ctrl/Cmd + Z** | Undo |
| **Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z** | Redo |

## Inserting citations

To insert a citation from your library into your manuscript:

1. Place your cursor where you want the citation to appear.
2. Click the **Citation** button in the toolbar.
3. Use the **Search** tab to find a citation by title, author, or DOI. Or use the **Manual** tab to enter citation details directly.
4. Select a citation style from the dropdown.
5. Click on the citation to insert it.

The citation appears as a formatted in-text reference (for example, "[Smith et al., 2024]") that links to the full reference in your citation library.

## Math equations

You can add mathematical notation without leaving the editor or writing LaTeX by hand.

1. Place your cursor where the equation should go.
2. Click the **Σ** action in the toolbar.
3. Choose an **inline** equation to sit within a line of text, or a **block** equation to stand on its own line.
4. Build the equation and insert it.

Equations render as typeset math in your manuscript, and you can click one to edit it again later. Block equations support optional **equation numbering**, so you can reference them by number in your text.

## Rewrite with AI

While drafting, you can ask Alfred to help with a passage. Select some text and open the **bubble menu** that appears above your selection, then choose an action:

- **Rewrite** - Restate the passage more clearly.
- **Humanize** - Loosen stiff or mechanical phrasing into more natural prose.
- **Expand** - Develop a short passage into a fuller one.
- **Grammar** - Fix grammar and mechanics while keeping your meaning.

Each action returns a suggestion you can accept or discard. Your original text stays put until you decide to use the rewrite.

## Manuscript check

The **Manuscript check** panel reads your draft and reports only what you can confirm by looking at your own text:

- **Errors and consistency** - Spelling that drifts between two forms in the same document (analyse and analyze), hyphenation and capitalization that drift the same way, and abbreviations used before they are defined or defined and never used.
- **Clarity** - Jargon with a plain equivalent (utilize, use), genuinely wordy phrases (due to the fact that, because), and phrasing that reads as AI.
- **Typography** - Curly quotes, en dashes, and em dashes. These are cosmetic. Word and Google Docs insert them automatically as you type, and they say nothing about how the text was written.
- **Statistics** - Sentence length distribution and counts, described rather than graded.

There is no score and no grade. Every finding points at a specific passage you can read and judge for yourself, which is what makes it a signal for your judgement rather than a verdict.

The panel carries one line permanently: **this cannot tell you whether text was written by AI, and neither can any other tool.** Document-level AI detection is unreliable, and it is least reliable for scholars writing in English as a second language and for writing that has been carefully polished. Manuscript check reports what is in your text and leaves the conclusion to you.

### Spelling and grammar

You can turn on spelling and grammar checking inside the panel. It runs entirely in your browser, so your manuscript never leaves your device. This matters for unpublished or embargoed work. It is off by default and needs a one-time download of about 8 MB.

## Originality report

You can run an originality check on your manuscript from inside the editor and read the **plagiarism report** in place, without switching to another screen. The report shows matching passages so you can review and address them as you write.

The full similarity check runs when your manuscript is in **Final** status. For how matching works and what the results mean, see [Plagiarism Detection](/docs/v1.x/plagiarism-detection).

## Dictating text

You can dictate directly into your manuscript at the cursor instead of typing. Voice dictation, powered by the Bolo engine, transcribes your speech into the draft in English. Its optional **clean mode** removes filler words and fixes punctuation, which suits writing because dictated sentences land as clean prose. See [Voice Dictation](/docs/v1.x/voice-dictation) for details.

## Version history

The editor keeps a **version history** of your manuscript as you work. You can look back at earlier states of the document, which gives you a safety net when you make a large change and want to see, or return to, where the draft stood before.

## Auto-save

The editor **automatically saves** your work as you type. A status indicator in the toolbar shows the current save state:

- **Saving** - Your changes are being saved.
- **Saved** - All changes have been saved.
- **Offline** - No internet connection. Your changes will be saved when the connection is restored.

You never need to manually save - your changes are preserved automatically. If you lose your internet connection, the editor will retry saving when the connection is restored.

## Word count

A real-time **word count** is displayed in the editor, updating as you type. This helps you track your progress toward word count targets set by journals or advisors.

## Manuscript status

Each manuscript has a status:

- **Draft** - The manuscript is being worked on. You can edit the title, content, and all settings.
- **Final** - The manuscript is complete and locked. The content and title become read-only to prevent accidental changes. You can change the status back to draft at any time.

You can change the status from the manuscript editor.

> **Note:** Some features like plagiarism checking are only available when the manuscript is in **Final** status.

## Editing the title

To change your manuscript's title:

1. Click on the title at the top of the editor.
2. Type the new title.
3. The title saves automatically.

> **Note:** The title can only be edited while the manuscript is in **Draft** status.

## Deleting a manuscript

1. Go to **Manuscripts** in the sidebar.
2. Find the manuscript you want to delete.
3. Click the **Delete** button.
4. Confirm the deletion.

Deleted manuscripts are moved to the [Trash](/docs/v1.x/trash-and-recovery) and can be recovered.

## Next steps

- **[Add images to your manuscript](/docs/v1.x/manuscript-images)** - Upload and insert figures and diagrams.
- **[Apply manuscript guidelines](/docs/v1.x/manuscript-guidelines)** - Set formatting and style rules for your manuscript.
- **[Request peer reviews](/docs/v1.x/peer-reviews)** - Share your manuscript for feedback.
- **[Check for plagiarism](/docs/v1.x/plagiarism-detection)** - Run a similarity check before submission.