Comments

Leave yourself notes in the margin: on a passage that needs work, or at the spot where something’s missing.

Select some words and choose Edit → Add Comment (⌥⌘M), or right-click them. The passage is highlighted and a card opens in the margin, level with it; type your comment and press Return. With nothing selected, the comment goes at the cursor, marked with a small marker. Click a card to change it, and its × to delete the comment and keep the words. The card for the passage you’re in is outlined, so it’s easy to see which comment is which.

Out of the way when you want

View → Show Comments hides the cards. Commented passages keep a dotted underline and markers stay, so you can still see where comments are; click a marker to show them again.

Kept in the scene

Comments are kept in the scene’s own plain text file, in CriticMarkup, a plain-text standard that other writing programs read too. The editor hides the markup and keeps your typing from breaking it. Comments are edits like any other, waiting for your next save, and ⌘Z brings back one you deleted. They’re never printed: builds and word counts leave them out. When you send the book to an editor, your comments go with it as Word comments.