Glossary

The words these guides and the Studio use, each with the one thing it means.

1. Your work and its parts

Six words nest inside each other, largest first, and Tabularia uses each of them for one thing only.

Project: The thing you create, open, and name. It holds one manuscript and everything kept around it, from timelines and sheets to its history. See How a manuscript is structured.
Manuscript: The writing itself: one continuous run of prose from the first page to the last. A project has exactly one, never a folder of chapter files.
Book: One publishable work inside the manuscript. A Book owns its own front and back matter and numbers its own pages from 1.
Series: A manuscript holding more than one Book. It is still one manuscript, searched and scrolled as a whole, not a shelf of separate projects.
Act, Part: An optional grouping of consecutive Chapters inside a Book, made in Project Settings by saying which Chapters it runs from and to. Part is the same grouping under the word a printed book uses. A Book can open each one on a page of its own that reads Part One, or another word the Book chooses.
Chapter: Begins wherever you mark a line with the Chapter Heading style.
Introduction, Prologue, Epilogue: Three kinds of Chapter that open or close a Book's body and take no Chapter number. The Outline adds them, and a Chapter's Type turns an ordinary one into any of them. Renaming one does not change what it is.
Scene: A stretch of a Chapter between scene breaks. A Book with no Chapters at all can hold Scenes directly.
Heading: A titled line inside a Chapter, such as a date, a place, or a section of nonfiction. It appears in the Outline like a Chapter or a Scene, and can be turned into either.
Scene break: The mark between two Scenes. It carries no words on the page. Its name lives in the Outline instead.
Front & Back Matter: The pages of a Book that are not the story. Title page, copyright, and dedication sit at the front, with acknowledgements and About the Author at the back. Front matter is counted in small Roman numerals and back matter not at all, so neither moves the body's page 1, and both stay out of the word count. Where room is short, as in Project Settings, the Studio calls them Book Matter.
Field: Words on a matter page that state one of their Book's settings (its title, its author, or a publication detail) and follow the setting when it changes. Typing into a Field changes the setting too. A Field with nothing to state yet shows a gray placeholder, which an export or a print leaves out. See Publication.
Block style: What kind of line a paragraph is (Body Text or Chapter Heading, say), together with how it looks. You can make styles of your own. See Writing and formatting.

2. Starting a project

Starter: The Start with choice on a new project: Blank, Book, Series, and a few more. It decides only what is on the page when the project first opens.
Story Shape: An optional structure a new project opens on, like Three-Act or the Hero's Journey. It seeds named Acts and Chapters, and sometimes a timeline of beats, then leaves them to you. See Story shapes and outlines.
Story structure: A Story Shape that says where the turns fall, and leaves how many chapters to you. Its beats land on a timeline of their own.
Outline Shape: A Story Shape that names its sections and brings its own count of them, the way a chapter grid or a nonfiction outline does. It adds no timeline.
Import: Bringing an existing manuscript in from a file or a whole folder. See Importing an existing manuscript.

3. The Studio

The tour of the Studio shows where each of these sits on the screen.

Studio: The writing application, as opposed to the website around it.
Canvas: The middle of the Studio, where the manuscript is laid out as real pages in one long scroll and where all the writing happens.
Canvas toolbar: The floating pill at the foot of the canvas that holds text formatting, typography, and color.
Canvas menu: The menu you get by right-clicking the page. Anchors, spelling, and changing a selection's case live here.
Page presets: Ready-made page formats, from a standard submission manuscript to the common paperback and hardcover trims, each with its margins. One press sets the whole page.
Header: The bar across the top of the Studio, carrying the title, the Working Scope, and your counts. Its chevron opens the document menu, where themes and settings are.
Left sidebar: The column of tabs for moving around a project. Its tabs each have an entry on this page.
Projects tab: Every project you have, each on a row whose actions open its Settings, Export, and History.
Right panel: Two tabs that keep you company while you write: Drafts & Sharing and Sheets.
Drafts & Sharing: The right panel's tab for versions and the people you show them to. It takes one of three views at a time, each named below.
Drafts panel: The list of every draft in the project, where drafts are made, switched on, filtered, and nested. It is what Drafts & Sharing opens on.
Share panel: One draft's sharing view: the invitation form, the people it is shared with, and its published page.
Merge panel: Where a merge is settled, one change at a time or all at once, with Finish merge at the end.
Outline: Every Chapter, Scene, and Heading in the manuscript, as a list you can reorder and jump from. It builds itself from the prose. See Navigating a long manuscript.
Minimap: A miniature of the manuscript along the edge of the canvas. Drag its thumb to travel.
Timeline drawer: The panel along the bottom that lays the Outline and your timelines out side by side, each in a lane of its own, with the Overview Navigator beneath for panning and zooming.
Working Scope: How much of the manuscript you are working on right now: the whole thing, or the current Book, Act, Chapter, Scene, or Heading. The canvas, find, and the word counts all narrow to it.
Pinned scope: A Working Scope you build yourself from a timeline or a filtered Outline. It can skip around the book, so one character's chapters read end to end.
Project Settings: The dialog behind Settings on a project's row, where Books, Book Matter, and block styles are managed.
Visual Identity: The icon or picture and accent color that stand for a project, a timeline, or a sheet wherever it is listed.
Writing Tools: The switches that change how the page behaves while you type, spellcheck among them, and the way in to connecting an assistant.
Paragraph focus: Dims every paragraph but the one you are typing in.
Follow typing: Keeps the line you are writing a third of the way down the screen, like a typewriter, instead of letting it sink to the bottom edge.
Focus Mode: Everything off the screen but the page.
Themes: The Studio's color schemes. Papers are the light family and Inks the dark. Pigments tint the whole interface toward a single color.

4. Story tools

Anchor: A named place in the manuscript that stays put while you edit around it. A point anchor marks one spot and a range anchor a whole passage. Every Chapter and Scene has one underneath, which is how the Outline knows it exists.
Anchor Insert Mode: The switch that makes a click on the page place an anchor on the open timeline, instead of moving the cursor.
Timeline: One strand of the story traced through the manuscript, such as a character, a subplot, or a background war. It is laid along the book's own pages rather than along calendar dates. See Timelines.
Marker: One event on a timeline, held in place by an anchor.
Proportional and Structural: The timeline drawer's two layouts. Proportional draws every chapter as wide as it is long. Structural gives each one an equal share, which pulls a crowded stretch apart.
Label: A named color you put on Outline rows, anchors, and drafts. It might mark a point of view, a plot thread, or needs a pass. Filtering by a label is how you gather everything wearing it.
Sheet: A reference card kept beside the manuscript for one of four kinds of thing: People, Places, Items, or Concepts. Together they make a story bible. See Sheets.
Book Decorations: The included typographic ornaments: drop caps, the ornament over a scene break, and dividers. See Images and Book Decorations.
Assets: The images and Book Decorations a project can use, kept in the Assets tab.

5. Versions and safety

Three different safety nets, compared in Drafts, Snapshots, and autosave.

Autosave: Every keystroke, kept on your device as you type. There is no Save button.
Snapshot: A restore point you take on purpose, before a big cut or at the end of a day, and can go back to later.
History: A project's list of snapshots, reached from its row in the Projects tab. See Snapshots and History.
Live Manuscript: The top row of History: the manuscript as it stands now, ahead of every snapshot. It says how many changes you have made since the last one, and choosing it brings you back from previewing an older snapshot.
Undo/Redo History: The other half of History: every edit undo can reach, grouped by day. It stays on the device and never syncs.
Draft: A named alternative version of any passage, from one paragraph to the whole manuscript. You can switch between drafts, compare them, and merge the one that wins. See Working with Drafts.
Base Draft: The whole-manuscript draft every project starts with. Anything no other draft covers comes from it.
Draft Stack: Two drafts of the same passage showing at once, one after the other on the page, each in its own color.
Archive: Putting a draft away with its wording and comments kept. It moves under the Archived filter, where Preview shows it on its own, read-only. The panel's undo is the only way to put it back in the tree.
Delete permanently: Removing a draft for good, along with its wording, its comments, its Markup history, and any published page. Nothing takes it back, and it stays gone on your other devices too.
Lock: Makes a draft read-only, so the version you sent out cannot drift.
Merge: Folding a draft back into the one it came from, a difference at a time or all at once, through Markup Mode.

6. Review and sharing

Markup Mode: The redline for one draft, turned on from that draft's row. It shows what the draft would change and lets you settle each change. See Markup Mode and Review Changes.
Review Change: One proposed edit to one paragraph, accepted or rejected on its own. Nothing a collaborator proposes changes your words until you accept it.
Review Comment: A note left on a passage or a change. It asks or suggests, but never edits.
Share: An invitation to one draft, sent from Drafts & Sharing. It carries a role and, if you like, an expiry date. See Sharing your manuscript for review.
Reader: A role that can read the shared draft and change nothing.
Editor: A role that can mark up and comment on the shared draft, then send the review back to you. Neither role needs a paid plan.
Author: The role that holds everything, including merging and deleting. It belongs to the project's owner and is never handed out through a Share. The name printed on a title page is a different thing, the Author name in Project Settings.
Review: An Editor's finished work on a shared draft, returned with Submit to Author. It arrives as a draft of its own that you merge like any other.
Pending Reviews: The list at the head of the Drafts panel of every review somebody is waiting on, whether yours to read or yours to finish and submit.

7. Publishing and export

Published page: A draft put on the web as a page anyone with the address can read. Updating it keeps the address the same.
Handle: The name your published pages are served under, claimed once on the account page.
Slug: The words in a published page's address, when you want something other than the manuscript's title there.
Private Link: A published page that opens only for people holding its keyed link.
Shared Access Only: A published page that opens only for people the draft is shared with, signed in to their own accounts.
Update Automatically: Keeps a published page following its draft, republishing whenever the words change. Off, the page holds still at what you last published.
Export: A copy of the manuscript in another format, DOCX, PDF, or EPUB among them. See Exporting and printing.
Project archive: One file holding a whole project (sheets, timelines, and history included) for moving it to another device or keeping it safe. It is an export, and has nothing to do with archiving a project.
Archive Project: Files a project away under Archived in the Projects tab, deleting nothing. It sits at the foot of Project Settings, and Restore Project in the same place brings the project back.
Backup folder: A folder on your own disk, in Chrome or Edge on a computer, where every project keeps a copy. See Keeping backups in a folder.

8. Plans, devices, and assistants

Local workspace: Writing in the Studio without signing in. Everything works as it does on Free, but only in that one browser. Signing up offers to bring the work into your account.
Free: The whole writing application, with nothing metered, kept on the device you write on.
Cloud plan: The paid plan. It adds backup and sync between devices, sharing, and publishing. See Plans and what they unlock.
Sync: The Cloud plan carrying your projects between devices, and holding a copy online. See Sync, backup, and offline.
Assistant: An AI you already use, like Claude or ChatGPT, connected to your manuscript. See AI assistants.
Connector: The link that lets an assistant reach the manuscript you have open.
Direct edits: The Writing Tools switch that decides how far an assistant goes. Off, which is where it starts, its changes wait in a draft for you to merge. On, it may change your text itself, after taking a snapshot first.