Checking your prose with Prose Check and the Echo Report

Prose Check and the Echo Report help you spot writing habits that slow a reader down. They point out patterns. You decide what to keep, cut or rewrite.

Prose Check in the open chapter

Prose Check looks only at the chapter you have open in Write.

1. Open the chapter in Write.
2. In the panel beside the editor, open the Prose Check tab.
3. Read the list. Click a word in the list to step through its uses in the text.
4. Tick Underline these in the text if you want to see each flagged word in the editor.

What Prose Check looks for

Prose Check shows four kinds of habit:

Filler words: words that add little to a sentence.
Wordy phrases: longer wordings, each with a shorter alternative to consider.
Weak verbs: phrases such as "there was" and "was walking", which often hide a stronger verb.
Close repeats: the same word used again within a short space.

Not every flag is a problem. "There was" is sometimes exactly right. Read the sentence before you change it.

Echo Report for the whole book

Prose Check covers one chapter at a time. The Echo Report counts the same habits across the whole book, so you can see which ones have crept into many chapters.

1. Choose Book → Echo Report…. You can also click Echo Report for the Whole Book… under Prose Check.
2. Read the table. Each row shows a word or phrase, the list it comes from, how many times it appears and in how many chapters.
3. The lists are Your words, Filler and Wordy.
4. Click a row to find every use of that word in the book.

A count is not a score. A word used forty times may be a deliberate part of your voice. The report only shows you where to look.

Add your own words to watch

Some habits are specific to you, such as "smiled", "nodded" or "of course". You can add them to the Echo Report.

1. Open the Echo Report.
2. Under YOUR WORDS, type one word or phrase on each line.
3. Click Save Words and Count Again.

Your words appear in the report under the Your words list, with their counts across the book.

Working with the results

Here is a practical order for going through the list:

Start with the Echo Report to find habits that appear in many chapters.
Open each chapter in Write and check its Prose Check list.
For each flagged use, decide whether to keep it, cut it or rewrite it.
Read the sentence aloud, or use Read Aloud, to hear whether the change reads naturally.
Run the Echo Report again to see the updated counts.

If you use Find in the Book (Ctrl+Shift+F) to find every match of a word, check each match before you use Replace All. Replacing every match at once can change sentences you meant to keep. Book → Version History… can take a change back if you need it.