The writing canvas

The canvas is where you spend your time in Calliope. It’s a single column of serif prose at book measure, with the chrome kept faint and to the edges so the page is the thing you look at.

Book typography

Your prose is set the way a printed book is set, not the way a text box is:

• Indented paragraphs, set solid. Body paragraphs run with no blank line between them; each new paragraph begins with a first-line indent that scales with the type size. The first paragraph of a chapter — and the first paragraph after a scene break — is flush left, with no indent, exactly as a typesetter would do it.
• Scene breaks. A section break renders as a spaced centred row of middots (· · ·) with symmetric breathing room above and below.
• A live word count sits in the top chrome and updates as you type.

This is a reading-fidelity choice: what you see on the canvas is close to what the exported book will look like.

Paper themes

Calliope isn’t stark white. Four warm paper tones — Oat, Mist, Sand, Clay — are available from the top of the editor, and the whole app re-tones to match your choice. Your selection persists across reloads, so the app stays the colour you like.

Light and dark

The paper tones are only half of it. Calliope also has a light and dark setting, and it’s a second axis layered on top of the papers — every paper has a dark variant. So it’s paper × light-or-dark, not a separate set of themes: dark Oat still reads warm-neutral, dark Sand still leans gold. Dark keeps the same house rule as light — warm, low-contrast, no pure black and no pure white.

Beside the paper swatches sits a small System / Light / Dark control (in the editor’s top bar, and in the actions menu on a phone):

• System follows your device’s appearance setting — and flips live the moment your OS switches between light and dark, with no reload.
• Light and Dark are explicit overrides: pick one and it sticks until you change it.

Like your paper choice, the setting is remembered in your browser across sessions, and it applies whether you’re signed in or writing anonymously.

Focus mode

Toggle focus mode and everything dims except the paragraph you’re working on: the rest of the page fades back, the block under your cursor stays at full strength, and the chapter header recedes. It’s for the moments when you want the sentence in front of you and nothing else.

Typewriter scrolling

On a desktop-sized window, the line you’re writing stays around the middle of the screen — a touch below, really — instead of creeping down to the bottom edge as you type. The page scrolls under your cursor, a gentle “typewriter” feel, so you’re never writing against the very bottom of the window and never have to stop and scroll up for room.

It’s automatic — there’s nothing to switch on. And it knows when to step aside: on phones and on short windows it stays out of the way and keeps the normal scrolling, so it never eats into a small screen.

The chapter title

The chapter’s title sits at the top of the canvas as an editable line — click and type, and it saves when you move away or press Enter. An unnamed chapter shows its number instead (its position across the whole book), so a manuscript written as a plain numbered sequence looks right without you naming anything. Clear a title and the number comes back.

Moving between chapters

Just above the title sit Previous and Next controls, so you can move through the manuscript in reading order without going back out to Structure each time. Hovering one shows the neighbouring chapter’s title; at the very first or very last chapter, the control that would lead nowhere simply isn’t shown.

The gutter dots

Down the margins of the page are small dots, and they’re the quiet hinge between your prose and everything Calliope keeps beside it:

• A dot in the left margin tracks your cursor as you type, arrow around, or click — a subtle marker of where you are.
• A dot in the right margin marks a paragraph that has something anchored to it — a note, a to-do, a chat thread. Paragraphs without anything are quiet; hover a paragraph, or move into the gutter, and its dot appears so you can add something.

Click a right-margin dot and the marginalia pane opens beside that paragraph — the prose reflows to make room rather than being covered over. A card in the margin can also jump you back to its paragraph, pulsing the dot when you land. See Marginalia for the full picture.

Moving text to another chapter

Sometimes a scene ends up in the wrong chapter. Select one or more paragraphs and the same selection bubble that offers Link to fact also offers Move to…:

1. Pick a destination — search or browse the list of every other chapter.
2. Choose where it lands — drop it at the beginning or at the end of that chapter, or choose Hand-pick a spot…, which opens a quiet, read-only view of the destination where an “insert here” line follows your cursor to the nearest paragraph break; click to place the text exactly there.

Two things make this safe to do mid-draft:

• Your marginalia travels with the text. A note, to-do, or chat thread anchored to a moved paragraph follows it into the new chapter — nothing is left behind.
• It’s reversible. You land in the destination with the moved text briefly pulsing, and a small bar offers Return (jump back to where it came from) and Undo (put everything back exactly as it was).

You move whole paragraphs — a partial selection rounds out to the paragraphs it touches. It’s the paragraph-level companion to reordering whole chapters in Structure.

Autosave

Autosave runs on a short debounce as you write — not on every keystroke, but you never press save.

Spell-check

Spell-check is off by default — a manuscript full of invented names and deliberate misspellings doesn’t need every other word underlined in red, in any language, by the browser. But it’s there when you want it: a spell-check toggle sits in the editor’s top toolbar (and in the ⋯ menu on a phone). Flip it on and native spelling underlines appear as you write; the setting applies immediately and is remembered per browser, like your paper and theme.

On a phone

The canvas is fully responsive. On a phone the prose goes full-bleed with the book typography intact, the desktop toolbar collapses into a single ⋯ menu, and the marginalia open as a bottom sheet — press and hold a paragraph to bring up its notes and chat. The Map opens as its own full-screen view. Nothing is cut; it’s one responsive build, not a stripped-down mobile app.