Ellipsus Release Notes

Ellipsus Plus is here! Meet our optional paid plan, built from community feedback to keep Ellipsus independent, sustainable, and improving for everyone.

Custom themes, AI-free writing insights, a proof-of-work layer to support human writing, and a lot more!

Today is the biggest day for Ellipsus since we launched in 2023!

Back then, we began building Ellipsus with a simple belief: writers deserve a place to create, collaborate, and share their work without handing over their words, their data, or their creative process to bad actors and Big Tech—a promise that matters now, more than ever.

Generative AI has moved quickly into creative tools, writing platforms, publishing spaces—and seemingly every other corner of the internet—without consent, transparency, or respect for the writers whose work trained these systems in the first place. The need for independent human-first alternatives has never felt more urgent.

We see this reflected everyday in our growing community—Ellipsus is now home to nearly 600,000 writers (and counting!), hosting over 5 million documents. Writers are rejecting Big Tech's data mining model in favor of tools that respect user privacy and reflect our values.

We're so honoured that people are choosing Ellipsus to be their writing home. We're a small full-time team building, maintaining, supporting, and improving the tool every day.

And to keep doing that sustainably—without compromising the promises that brought people here—we’re introducing Ellipsus Plus.

Plus is a set of optional features on top of free Ellipsus. It helps fund the continued development of Ellipsus for everyone, free and paid; while helping us stay independent, ad-free, and working to improve the tool well into the future.

That means the Ellipsus you know is staying free: you can keep writing with unlimited documents, drafts, collaborators, and core features. Free Ellipsus will continue to receive updates, improvements, and new features too, including some major work already planned (like offline syncing and native apps).

Plus exists so we can keep building the tool you love.

https://youtu.be/XWlieX-amIw

Built from community feedback

Before deciding what Plus should be, we asked you—our 28k+ strong Discord community—what you wanted to see in a paid plan, and what sort of pricing felt fair to you.

More than 3,000 users responded to our survey on Ellipsus Plus. In that survey, we asked users what amount felt feasible and fair, and set our pricing to match accordingly. More than 70% of respondents said they liked or loved the idea of a subscribe-to-own model: a way to keep Ellipsus funded long-term, while breaking up the cost of the license in a way that works for our community.

Subscribe-to-own

We all have subscription fatigue. With the subscribe-to-own model, you can buy Plus outright with a one-time purchase, or join the annual or monthly payment plans. Your payments count toward ownership of your Ellipsus Plus license.

We think ownership of creative tools is non-negotiable. Every Plus subscription leads to ultimate ownership of the tool. Not metaphorical ownership, but real ownership, including all future updates to the Plus plan.

With any plan, you can start using all Plus features immediately; and once it’s paid in full, you own Ellipsus Plus forever. No endless subscriptions.

And when we asked what Plus features people wanted to see, the top requests included supporting Ellipsus and helping keep it sustainable—hell yeah!—AI-safety features, custom themes, and writing insights.

So… that’s what we built!

The features

Our introductory Plus features are designed to be fun, creative, practical, and help you get the most out of the tool!

We really hope you enjoy them.

Custom themes

You know we love a good theme. We also know every story has a whole personality and mood of its own—smutty vampiric melodrama, candlelit yearning, an academic thesis on why the villain had a point, or this GIF understands my protagonist better than I do.

With custom themes, you can design your writing space using any colors, gradients, images, and GIFs. Chill, romantic, moody, gothic, sparkly, Myspace-ified, meme’d, or an homage to that particular character (you know the one) who won’t leave you alone? Make as many as you want. The choices are (for all practical and mildly dangerous purposes) infinite.

You can also attach custom themes to Reader links when you share your work with others, use them as backdrops for your shareable Snippets, and easily export and import themes to share with friends and your community.

We can’t freaking wait to see what you come up with.

Emboss

Emboss is our proof-of-work layer for human writing.

Instead of relying on unreliable “AI-powered” “verifiers” that judge a piece after the fact, ignite witch hunts, and occasionally appear to believe a particular punctuation is probable cause (Em Dash Defense Squad chiming in), Emboss is AI-free, and comes from real writing-process data from inside Ellipsus: time spent writing, sessions, edits, thinking pauses, revisions, and other selected metrics you choose to share—your Writing Journey.

Emboss lets you show the human labor behind your work through an authorship badge and metrics card attached to a document, draft, or Reader link. Your Emboss data is private by default, and only visible if you choose to share it.

You can also opt to share selected snapshots of your version history on Reader links to show how the work came together.

And this is all without data scraping or AI algorithms purporting to know whether you “sound human” enough. Instead, Emboss shows the record of the labor, care, and love that went into your work.

(AKA… the human stuff.)

Writing insights

Writing insights gives you a clearer view of your own prose. You can spot patterns across nine metrics, including vocabulary diversity, sentence length, sentence rhythm, paragraph density, sentence openers, passive voice, adverbs, word frequency, and repeated echoes.

These insights are created from simple pattern-counting inputs that run locally on your device. That means (say it with us!) no AI is used, and your text never leaves the editor.

It’s a great way to understand the texture and flow (and let’s be honest… the wonky bits) of your own writing: what makes your words yours, so you can keep writing, and keep improving.

Customizable Snippets

Our expanded Snippets feature lets you turn your favorite lines into shareable images, now customizable to make those words pop. You can match a Snippet to your custom theme, upload an image or GIF, use any Ellipsus font, any color choice, and add byline credits for authors or characters. Then send your words out into the world looking their best.

... And this isn't all of Ellipsus Plus. There will be more features added as we build, alongside improvements to the free plan—soon.

A better Ellipsus for everyone

Ellipsus Plus is here to help us build sustainably: for writers on the free plan, for Plus writers, and for the long-term future of Ellipsus and independent creative tools.

We hope you’re as excited about Plus as we are! There’s tons more to come, and we can’t wait to build it for you. Free or paid, Ellipsus is going to keep getting better.

Thank you for your support; now please, go forth and explore! You can start your 7 day free trial any time.

Have questions about Plus? We’re hosting an “Ask the Team” doc where we’ll be answering your burning questions. Please make comments there!

Happy writing,

• The Ellipsus Team

Want to connect with a like-minded community and get the latest news on Ellipsus? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

Spring is all about new beginnings. Here at Ellipsus, we’re coming out of the long, dark winter with fresh features and updates, plus a big survey on creativity in the age of AI, and how we fight back against the slopocalypse.

(Someone’s gotta do it.)

Pages vs. Pageless

We've added a way to paginate your writing, control page formatting, navigate by page number, and see what your work would look like in print.

Learn all about pages in the Help Center!

Survey on creativity in the age of AI

What does it actually feel like to be a writer in the age of AI? We ran a survey to hear directly from the people doing the work. The response was overwhelming, and confirmed much of what we've all been thinking.

97.8% of respondents avoid suspected AI-generated work. There's a basic change in how we approach what we read: we no longer assume there’s a human on the other end.

Almost half of respondents worry their work could be mistaken for AI—and 99.5% think people should have the right to know if work was written by a human or not.

Human writing = resistance. But despite AI content flooding creative spaces, most writers say they’re writing more than ever—in spite of "effortless slop", for the joy of making something only they could make.

TL;DR: if you hate AI, you're far from alone—but resistance is needed and possible, especially by staying creative. So keep the words coming, and beat back the bots!

Check out the full survey findings in the blog post!

A survey for authors

• Do you self-publish your writing?
• Do you publish online to an audience?
• Do you submit your work professionally?

We’d love to hear about how you work, and which tools help along the way.

Take this short survey, and help shape what we build next.

Weekly writing prompts

We'll be sharing writing prompts on social media, and you can also get them emailed right to your inbox.

If you'd like to receive an email with three human-authored writing prompts every Monday, click here! (Psst—We'll even send you a bonus prompt.)

The ultimate template for fictional religions

Our newest world-building template (and most in-depth yet!) helps you craft a detailed belief system that's deeply rooted in your world.

Preview the Fictional Religion & Deity Template on Ellipsus.

Writing Fantasy Worlds: Tips for Making a Fantastical World Feel Real

Writer and guest contributor Heather Sykes shared their tips for creating immersive, believable fantasy worlds that live on in your readers' minds.

Read the full post here.

And more!

• You can now preview templates—we've added Reader links for each one: find them in the Help Center!
• We've tweaked the Settings page layout to make future changes easier.
• After what felt like both a hundred years and a blink of an eye, AO3 exited open beta! Celebrate by posting a fic of your own directly from Ellipsus.
• Last but not least—we're open to blog submissions on craft, content, and culture. (Here's how to write for us!)

Happy writing,
The Ellipsus Team

Want to connect with a like-minded community and get the latest news on Ellipsus? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

Add images, flesh out your fic, and decode those oh-so-cryptic doc titles. This month we delivered several updates to help bring your projects to life.

Add images to your docs

Research, reference images, not-so-SFW fan art—images can be just as crucial to the writing process as the words themselves, and now they can all live in Ellipsus.

Upload, drag ‘em, paste ‘em in—it’s easy to add images to your drafts and docs, as long as they’re the right file format (JPG, JEPG, PNG, or SVG) and size (512KB). Plus there’s no limit on the number of images you (or your collaborators) can add. Learn more about image support in the help center.

One thing to note is that—PDFs aside—your images don’t travel outside your docs; i.e., no hotlinking. There are two reasons for this:

• Preventing abuse / managing costs: We want to avoid people treating Ellipsus as a pure image-storing service. It's not just a financial consideration—it could open us up to other problems if bad actors start using Ellipsus with the sole intention to distribute image links.
• Limiting who can see and share your images: We're honored that you trust us with your writing, and we want you to feel the same way about images. In addition to being deliberate about where they're stored (Ireland), we're also deliberate about how they can be shared. Image links are protected by default, so anyone you’re not collaborating with who tries to open an image link will be redirected to a 404 page.

Have fun, and please don’t melt our servers!

Plan your fic with 3 new templates

Our latest batch of templates is dedicated to fan writers—bring your blorbos to life (or kill them, or resurrect them from the dead …) and then give them all the emotional depth and drama they deserve!

• Fandom ship template: Map your ship’s emotional beats, from the first glance to final climax, emotional or otherwise.
• Canon divergence template: Break the timeline, rewrite your tools, and give your faves a happy (or not-so-happy) ending.
• AU planning template: Modernize, magicalize, or make ‘em rival antique shop owners.

Head to your dashboard to explore all 13 templates. What templates should we work on next? Let us know over our our ideas board!

Manage your dashboard

Many of you are contending with a growing number of Ellipsus docs! We’re adding two small improvements that emphasize the “p” in WIP.

Doc sorting is smarter

We’ve updated the logic for document timestamps to provide a more accurate overview of recent activity. In addition to editing main, all of these actions will be reflected in your doc’s last edited timestamp:

• Renaming or adding a description
• Creating, editing, or duplicating a draft
• Adding or removing a collaborator

Decode docs with descriptions

That clever title you hammered out at 3 AM? It’s a little less clear in the harsh light of day. Now, just like folders, documents can have descriptions. Descriptions are visible to any invited collaborators, which offers a little more flexibility in how you use them. For instance:

• Summarize your story or chapter (the florals in spring of use cases, yes)
• Share the latest status (e.g., Looking for input on X, Y, Z; working through a specific scene, etc.)
• Note the relationship between docs in a folder

Syncing and growing pains

Does it feel like you’ve been seeing "Saved locally” more often? It’s not just you. At peak times, our synchronizers have been straining to keep up with the amount of people writing between 9 PM and 1 PM UTC. One the one hand, it’s one of those “good” problems to have—enough people are using Ellipsus that we need to scale our systems. But nothing about it feels good if loading lags, your collaborator’s changes don’t show up right away, and an ominous yellow dot looms over your writing. Actually, it kind of sucks.

We’ve been working on the problem from several angles—everything from scaling up our machines to handle the increased traffic to finer-grained performance optimizations in the code. There’s still a lot of work ahead of us, but we hope you’re starting to notice a difference.

Want to connect with a like-minded community and get the latest news on Ellipsus? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

We've released dozens of new features, improvements, and fixes since our last update. (And with 400k of you writing, we love to see it! 🎉)
Here's your TL;DR on all the things we shipped in the past few months!

More people are writing on Ellipsus than ever before—and reading, too. (That's right, our new Reader links have made quite the splash!) With 400k writers in Ellipsus working on 4 million docs ... whoever said "reading is dead" needs to take a look at these numbers! 😵‍💫
We've released dozens of features, improvements, and fixes since our last update. Here's your TL;DR in case you missed it!

Introducing: the Reader!

This month's crowning glory is the Reader. 👑
(Oh, it's beautiful...)
Now, you can share Reader links to your work with friends and on socials. In the Reader, you can:

• Enable props to get appreciation from readers—when reading, show your love with the 👏 button!
• Enable comments and replies for fangirling and feedback. Add gifs, emojis, and spoilers for ye old internet vibes.
• Set the right access level (private, collaborators, public) and choose whether copying your text is allowed.
• Choose a theme for your audience to set the mood. Readers have the option to change themes, toggle accessible fonts, and more.
• You can also hide spoilers in Reader comments with formatting!

Learn all about sharing Reader links here!

.docx Import and Export

Moving your work from GDocs & Word just got that much easier. Import your your docs quickly (one by one, or a bunch at once!), or export your docs to .docx whenever you want.
Importing your work just got a whole lot easier.

Document zoom

From 50% to 200%, get the right dimensions with independent browser & document zoom settings.
Zoom in on desktop or mobile!

Emoji picker

Type your :favorite emoji: and see it materialize, or choose from the emoji menu. You can insert an emoji in Reader comments using the icon—or, in the editor, just type a colon followed by the first letters of your favorite emoji.
All the emojis!

Other improvements

• Snippets now default to your current Ellipsus theme. Share away!
• You can hide text highlights in the Reader via the display settings (where theme editing lives).
• Navigating around the app got faster with rendering upgrades.
• Document & draft info has moved to the document card (it was formerly in the right-hand toolbar).
• We've fixed a number of bugs around sync and sync-warning banners.
• We're now posting Ellipsus tutorials & writing content on YouTube Shorts.
  Smash that subscribe >

Meanwhile, on the blog...

We took a hard look and deep-dove into the world Google built: the (lack of) privacy, (mis)use of our data, and the money that flows out of their surveillance machine.
Check out the full series!

Ellipsus exists, grows, and thrives thanks to the prolific, passionate, super creative, and slightly obsessive writers and readers (like you!)—proof that human creativity isn’t going anywhere.
So keep writing, keep reading—the LLM-industrial-complex doesn’t stand a chance.
Happy writing,
The Ellipsus team

Want to connect with a like-minded community and get the latest news on Ellipsus? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

WRITTEN BY

Kate Donahue

PUBLISH DATE

08/12/2023

Making writing more intuitive

“Ellipsus inspires me to write more,” as one beta writer put it. Now, we can’t say that any one tool will make you a better writer, but it certainly helps when tools work with you to bring out your best ideas.

Building a text editor from the ground up is a challenging endeavor. Since the start of our beta, we’ve worked to balance table stakes improvements (Hurray for text indenting!) alongside features that make Ellipsus accessible and delightful.

Go dark (or light)

The Ellipsus text editor offers a minimalist experience that puts the full focus on your words. While many writers enjoyed the paper-like aesthetic, others clamored for dark mode. In November, we added a dark mode option, allowing writers to choose between a paper-white or ink-black editor that’s perfect no matter what time of day (or night) inspiration strikes.

Write anywhere

Despite our early expectations, many of you are already writing with Ellipsus on mobile! A full-fledged mobile app is still a ways off, but your enthusiasm for sneaking in edits in a break room or while tucked under the covers inspired us to make sure the mobile web app was a little more polished. Now, you can write, format, comment, chat, and even merge on the go.

Real-time collaboration meets version control

We want to make it easy for anyone to write together. Since entering beta, we’ve focused on introducing new ways for writers to write, edit, and share feedback.

Share view-only links

Sharing should be seamless, and sometimes it’s easier to post a doc in a place where you’re already collaborating, like Discord or WhatsApp. With Ellipsus, you can copy a link and paste it anywhere to give anyone read-only access—no account needed.

Search engines never index links you share—they only go where you share them.

Invite editors to collaborate

Give individuals access to your document, enabling them to create drafts where they can offer revisions or expand on an idea. You can see when you’re in the same draft and even write together. Then, when you're ready, you can compare and merge changes.

We’re proud of the flexibility we can offer today. Still, we plan to go further and offer crystal-clear privacy settings and a full accounting of draft and document changes (and who made them) to promote the best co-writing experience on the market. Watch this space.

Collaborate on your terms

Of course, collaboration isn’t limited to reading and revisions. There might be a flurry of questions, a volley of what-ifs, or even dialogue you need to roleplay. This can happen in real-time or async, and we want Ellipsus to champion both workflows.

Chat in docs and drafts

During early user research sessions, we learned many writers toggled between their text editor and Discord to write and collaborate. While there’s lots to love about Discord (we even host our community there), a fragmented workflow inevitably leads to friction. This insight led us to bring chat not just to documents, but to each individual draft to keep conversations focused, relevant, and in context.

Comment on individual drafts

Hosting fluid discussions in chat is great, but sometimes, you want to share feedback on a specific line of text. For that, we have comments. Editors can highlight a selection of text in any draft to leave specific comments. Commenting is one of the latest features we’ve shipped, so it’s still on the simpler side: You can create, delete, reply to, and resolve comments. But soon, you’ll be able to filter comments and focus on the feedback that matters most.

The road ahead

Several near-term and mid-term feature areas are top of mind for the Ellipsus team. In addition to tending to our text editor (lest you think we don’t plan to add paragraph spacing or customize fonts), we’re working on:

• An easy-to-navigate version history:
  Writing is rewriting. And rewriting. And sometimes reverting. We want to make it simple to see who wrote what, when they wrote it, and when drafts were merged. And, of course, if you want to go back in time to pick up on a past narrative thread, we want that to be simple, too.

• A much-improved merging experience: Today, merging in Ellipsus is pretty simple. You can view your draft alongside the main document, compare changes, and merge. In the future, we want to make choosing which changes to merge easier so you can merge faster and more frequently without accidental overwrites.

Get involved with the beta

As mentioned, building something this ambitious takes time. More importantly, it takes feedback from people equally passionate about writing. Each week, we invite batches of writers to explore Ellipsus and share their input. To join the beta, fill out a short survey. See you in the draft!

Join the beta

Original source

WRITTEN BY

Kate Donahue

PUBLISH DATE

25/03/2024

Text editing: from default to deluxe

We want to help writers build new worlds—and that requires a rich text editor to help words pop off the digital page. Our OG text editor prioritized simple, intuitive, and aesthetically pleasing defaults. But your stories deserve more than default options—so we’re prioritizing improvements to our editor that give you full control over text styling.

Choose from six new fonts

We initially chose Literata because it’s elegant, easy to read, and felt quite—if the name wasn’t clue enough—literary. But we always knew one font could only get us so far—typography is personal and can add to (or take away from) the writing experience. Over on Discord, writers shared a multitude of reasons for needing additional fonts, ranging from accessibility to inspiration to fun.

Our newest batch of fonts addresses all three points. Open Dyslexic caters to the needs of readers with visual processing disorders (and looks pretty rad); Courier Prime is a monospaced font that works great for screenplays; and Comic Neue is casual and fun (but not distractingly so).

Customize line height and spacing

The spacing between letters, words, lines, and paragraphs can impact everything from readability to rhythm to tone. It makes sense that writers would want to manage any elements that contribute to a better reading experience.

Open your main document or any draft to set line height, letter spacing, word spacing, or paragraph spacing for any paragraph style (e.g., Heading 1, Paragraph, Caption, etc.). When you merge a draft, your main document will inherit the new styling.

Find and replace text

We’re constantly amazed by how prolific our writers are. Many of you have been kind enough to give insight into the sheer amount of words you’re writing—often documents with 50,000+ words! So, we can appreciate how frustrating it was when you wanted to make a large-scale change, like renaming a character or location.

Now, you can find and replace text in an individual document or draft without any extra hassle. Click the magnifying glass in the right-hand panel (or tap it if you’re on mobile), search, and switch to your heart’s content.

Faster formatting on mobile

Another surprise to us? The amount of time writers spend writing on their smartphones, whether it’s jotting down a few ideas during a break or an epic writing session before bedtime.

To make it easier to add and format text from your phone, we’re adding a persistent formatting bar to the bottom of the editor. In its default state, you can quickly undo (or redo) past actions; bold, italicize, or underline text; or open the formatting panel. If you’ve selected text in a draft, you can also tap the panel to add a comment.

Collaboration: stay on top of edits

Non-writers often ask us: Do writers collaborate? The answer is, of course, YES. But collaboration looks different for every writer. Some co-author, some tap an editor for an extra pair of eyes, others rely on beta readers. We want Ellipsus to work for every kind of workflow.

Our latest improvements make it easier to work together, process feedback, and safely iterate without losing important changes.

Review your version history

Writing is never just writing. It’s also revisiting, rewriting, and retooling. Before, you could look at active and merged drafts to see how a document evolved. Now, you can look at the version history for any document or draft to see what changes were made, when they were made, and who made them. And if you want to resurrect a previous version, all it takes is one click (okay, maybe three).

See your collaborators’ activity

When you’re collaborating in real-time, stepping on your collaborators’ figurative toes is almost inevitable. With live cursors, you can see where your collaborator is in a draft so that you can see their changes as they’re made, swarm on a section together, or give them space to do their thing. Combined with chat and comments, working with editors, beta readers, or co-authors has never been easier.

Get notified about new comments

We want Ellipsus to make real-time and asynchronous collaboration fluid and effortless. To that end, we want to offer notifications that are useful without being overwhelming. Our first step toward a better notifications experience is comment notifications.

Whenever someone leaves a comment on one of your drafts—or replies to a comment you’ve left on any draft—we’ll send an email notification. Most email platforms will thread these emails so that even drafts with a deluge of comments won’t disrupt your inbox.

Sign-up, sign-in: simpler than ever

Last but not least, we’ve worked out a few important kinks in our sign-up / sign-in flows, making it easier for new folks to get started with Ellipsus and for existing writers to get back to their work.

Let your readers skip the waitlist

When you share an Ellipsus link, anyone can view (but not edit) that draft or document. Now, readers can click the Sign up button and enter their email addresses to skip the waitlist and get immediate access to our beta.

Log in faster (and less frequently)

We’ve increased session lifetime to 100 days if you’re actively using Ellipsus, meaning you should see our sign-in screen less often. We’ve also added one-time login codes to our email previews, so you can easily see the code without having to open the email.

What’s next

As we head into spring, we’re intently focused on two key themes and a suite of features and improvements to support them:

• Large document management: Working on large documents—alone or with others, on your desktop or on your smartphone—shouldn’t be cumbersome. We’re working on performance and navigation improvements to make loading, reading, and writing in large documents much, much nicer. This includes tables of contents, folders, and rebuilding mergeing to support section-by-section editing.

• Flexible collaborative workflows: We’ve learned a lot about how our writers get feedback on their work. Working with editors, distributing chapters to beta readers, Roleplaying in-document with a co-author… these all have different requirements when it comes to setting permissions, tracking contributions, and incorporating changes. We want to make it simpler to share drafts and solicit feedback without worrying about privacy, AI, or—in the case of your collaborators—signing up for yet another service.

Want to help us shape these themes?
Drop by Discord or our ideas board to share your feedback. If you’re ready to join the beta, sign up below and keep an eye on your inbox.

Join the beta

Original source

WHAT'S NEW

Ellipsus is Now in Open Beta

Growth comes from love, not the other way around. Last fall, we kicked off the closed beta for Ellipsus with the goal of making a writing tool people love. After months of product cycles and conversations with our community, we’re ready to bring Ellipsus to a broader audience.

Now anyone can join the beta; collaborate with their co-authors, editors, and beta readers; and help shape the future of Ellipsus.

Written by
John McClelland
Rex Mizrach
Kate Donahue

PUBLISH DATE
28/05/2024

(Re)introducing Ellipsus

The genesis for Ellipsus stems from a deeply personal experience. Writing together is still fucking hard! How do we know? After leaving my last company in 2022, my partner Rex and I started to work on a meta-modern space opera. We struggled to organize our thoughts. Valuable comments were lost across various drafts. Inevitably, important context would get scrapped, leaving us frustrated and demotivated.

Writing at the same time wasn’t the issue. But exploring directions, reconvening, and bringing our ideas back together was impossible. So, by the end of 2022, our space opera was (temporarily) set aside in favor of a bigger idea.

With Ellipsus, we want to make it easy for anyone to write together—no matter how many editors, reviewers, or co-authors are involved. It’s still early days, but here are a few things that have stood out to our closed beta testers.

Wrangle your big, hairy ideas (and extra-long docs)

Google Docs is made for memos. But manuscripts? It’s a messy, disconnected process. The more people you add, the more edits made, or the longer the document—the more it breaks. During our early user research, we consistently heard that Google Docs strained to support larger documents, buckling once a document crept past 30,000 words.

Ellipsus powers writers writing stories in the hundreds of thousands of words. And, most importantly, it powers writers writing big works together. Since 2006, Google Docs has relied on the server-first Operational Transformation (OT). We combine the more modern, local-first Conflict-free Replicated Datatypes (CRDT) and Git-like version control. (This is why we often tell folks to think of us as “GitHub for writers.") This lets us offer a deeper level of collaboration and control, and greater granularity when it comes to who wrote what, when. In turn, you have full creative control without the mess.

Collaborate freely on any device

We’ve surveyed and interviewed hundreds of writers over the past year to understand just how essential collaboration is to their workflow. Writers lean on their community for fact-checking, role-playing dialogue, beta reading, line edits, and more. And when writing tools lack a collaborative layer or can’t support complex works, they have to enlist Discord, email, or even WhatsApp to work with others.

Ellipsus aims to make writing effortlessly collaborative for writing projects of every size. With drafts and version history, co-authors and editors have the space to riff on existing ideas and explore new ones, without worry about work getting lost. With comments and in-app chat, writers can jot down ideas, solicit real-time feedback, and discuss work to be done in one place—no additional apps needed.

Write with rights

In a world where generative AI is insinuating itself into nearly every creative field, writers are rightfully concerned about protecting their work. But AI is just the latest threat in a long history of published works being plagiarized, censored, or purged.

We are unwaveringly writer-centric. That means we don’t police or lay claim to your art—it’s yours and yours alone—and we don’t place limits on what you can create, whether it’s NSFW, LGBT+, etc. We’re currently working with lawyers to make our stance explicit in the form of a rock-solid, user-friendly privacy policy.

The road to open beta

Getting here was no easy feat. And it certainly isn’t something we can take full credit for; at every step of the way, our community of early beta testers helped guide us with their ideas, wishes, and constructive feedback.

Entering beta carries a certain implicit risk: What if no one uses what we’re building? After all, not every test is a guaranteed success. Fortunately, we discovered early on that there’s a segment of writers that were very happy to pour their trust, sweat, and creativity into Ellipsus, despite the occasional technical hiccup.

Roughly 20% of our monthly active writers are what we call “power writers”—logging in multiple times a week, often switching between a laptop and smartphone, and writing for hours on end. This group has been instrumental in proving out the value of more experimental features like drafts and in-app chat, and pushing us to prioritize improvements around mobile web and large document management.

Our Discord community has been another pleasant surprise. Getting to play any part in facilitating writer-to-writer connections gives us major warm fuzzies. And seeing early signs that our writers aren’t just people like us, they’re people we like, has been incredibly motivating. In addition to improving our product, you can bet we’ll be doubling down on Discord to help spark conversations and give writers a safe, positive place to hone their craft.

What's ahead: public launch

We plan to officially rip the beta label off of Ellipsus and launch later this summer. There’s still lots to build and fine-tune before we can hit that milestone, and we need help to get there.

That’s where you come in!

As a writer in our open beta, you get to have a direct say in something being built for People. Like. You. You can also connect with likeminded freak-flag fliers in our Discord.

Sign up for Ellipsus

Original source

Every three months, we take a look back at the features and improvements we added to Ellipsus.
This quarter, we shipped some of our top feature requests, so you can tally up your words, take care of typos, traverse longer documents, and more.

Write and edit with ease

We've always been proud of the how Ellipsus supports your first few drafts—it's
simple
to get your ideas into the tool. But refining longer works was another story. So this past quarter, we focused on making it easier to view progress and put the finishing touches on your docs.

View word count while you write

Whether you have a daily writing goal, do your writing in sprints, or just like to quantify your progress, having your word count handy can be incredibly helpful.
Originally, word count was tucked under
Document info
in the right-hand panel—so it was
there
, but easy to overlook. After lots and lots of feedback and feature requests, we've moved it to the top of the editor so you can see
numbers go brrr
while you type. Click on the word count to reveal detailed information like character count and reading time. As a bonus, when you highlight a section of text, you'll see its word count up top.
If seeing your word count makes you anxious, you can scroll down slightly, and the top navigation will hide. When you're ready to reveal it again, scroll up slightly.

Check your spelling—when you're ready

One thing that's become clear via interacting with our community on Discord is that there is a distinction between writing and editing. (Obvious in retrospect. But as a self-proclaimed "person-who-writes-but-not-a-writer" I'm often guilty of smooshing the two phases together.) So when they're working to bang out key plot points and expand on dialogue, the last thing they want to see are distracting squiggles.
In Ellipsus, spell check is
off
by default. When you're ready to edit, you can switch it on and scan for typos in your document. Right now, it supports 10 languages: four variations of English, then German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and Polish. (If you need another language, reach out at [email protected] and let us know!)

Manage hyperlinks with less fuss

Previously, you could paste a URL onto a selection of text to hyperlink it, but it was impossible to see what was linked. Now, there's a bit more UI to support the experience. You can add a link (and title text) via the right-hand panel and select a link in your text to view, edit, or remove the URL.

Navigate docs quickly

Ellipsus is minimal by design. We want the UI to mostly stay out of the way so that you can focus on your ideas. Our next batch of updates are designed to make it easier to get around your document
and
the editor, whether you're a point-and-clicker or a keyboard maestro.

Stay organized with outlines

Ellipsus writers write
a lot
. (Like pushing-the-limits-of-our-tech-stack a lot.) And navigating a 100K-word document in a browser window (let alone via a smartphone) in Ellipsus was frankly starting to become a real pain in the ass.
Now, any headers in your document will automatically appear in outline mode so that you can click to jump to any point in your document. In addition to flexibility in navigation, it also offers an at-a-glance view of your document's structure, so you can check for consistency and balance.

Outline mode is
also
visible in view-only links, so that your readers can easily browse your document. And if you want to get their input on a specific chapter or section, just right-click on the heading in outline mode to copy and share a direct link.

Enjoy a slimmed-down sidebar

We’ve refreshed the right-hand sidebar to create more logical groupings. So functions related to formatting and navigating your document are up top, functions related to collaborating and sharing your document are in the center, and your doc info and support options are at the bottom.
Missing focus mode? You'll find your favorite espresso icon at the top of your editor, right next to your word count.

Get to know our keyboard shortcuts

We’re making our available shortcuts more visible. Click the game controller icon in the left-hand panel to reveal all the shortcuts we support for editing, formatting, collaborating, and more.

Stay on top of syncing

One of the things writers love most about Ellipsus is that they can pick up on their writing wherever they are, no matter the device. But important information about the syncing status was hidden under
Document info
, so a writer wouldn't always know if work stopped syncing changes to the server.
We've moved your connection status to the left-hand panel of the editor, right next to the dashboard icon. Click on it to see the current status as well as when content was last edited and synced.

As summer (finally) descends upon Europe, the Ellipsus team has one thing on our minds (aside from where to find the best Hugo Spritz): getting ready for our public launch. Before we cut that metaphorical ribbon, there's lots to do and lots for you to look forward to, like folders, better notifications, and improvements to merging.

Join our Discord to stay up to date on the latest developments, share your feedback, and meet other writers.

Original source

WHAT'S NEW

New in Ellipsus: Q3 2024

New
in
Ellipsus:
Q3
2024

Folders, notifications, search, and more. Collaborating on large-scale projects in Ellipsus is easier than ever.
Since July, we've been focused on making it easier to navigate your workspace, manage large-scale projects, and collaborate with other writers.

WRITTEN BY

Kate Donahue

PUBLISH DATE

19/08/2024

SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Better project organization

Like any beta product, Ellipsus has had its share of (manageable) scaling issues. The most pressing one is that people are writing a lot in Ellipsus, and typically working on very long works. While this is undoubtedly A Good Problem, it does create some frustrations around finding, loading, and sharing your work.

Our latest features make it easier to work on any type of project in Ellipsus.

• Store documents in folders (and subfolders)

  • Whether you're focused on serialized works published to AO3 or a single book-length piece supplemented by lots of research, folders can make your work much more manageable. (Not to be hyperbolic, but in the week it's been live for the Ellipsus team it's changed my entire life.)
  • Any folders you create can contain an unlimited number of documents and subfolders, so you can set them up in any way that works for you, such as:
  • Separating research, outlines, and world-building materials from the documents that will store your final work.
  • Storing your personal templates, like character sheets and world-building sheets.
  • Representing different stages in your workflow, like drafting, beta reading, and published.
  • Archiving older documents, or ideas you want to (eventually!) circle back to.

• You can learn more about creating folders and moving your documents here.

• Search document names

  • The other challenge that comes from having so many documents is trying to find them without tons of clicking and scrolling.
  • At the start of July, we added the ability to search for document names. Using the search field at the top of your dashboard, you can search all your documents (and folders!) as well as documents shared with you.

• More options for sharing and collaboration

  • Whenever we make a change in Ellipsus, we ask ourselves: Does this keep our writers in control? Whether it's styling text or managing drafts, we want writers to feel like they have the final say over their work—and that's even more important when it comes to how work is shared with others.

  • Choose whether links are private or view-only

    • When we first entered beta, Ellipsus documents could be viewed by anyone with the link. Now, all links are private by default, giving you an extra level of security before choosing to share your work.
    • If you want to enable view-only sharing, you can open Share and export to adjust your settings. Even with view-only access, links only go where you (and your collaborators) share them, and they're never indexed by search engines.

• Stay on top of updates in the notification center

  • If you're collaborating across multiple documents, it can be difficult to stay on top of new activity without sneaking back to your email inbox.
  • Now, you keep tabs on what's happening right from our notification center, available from your dashboard and editor. Currently, we send notifications about new document invites, comments, and replies. With this change, you also have more control over which notifications (if any) are sent as emails.

• You can learn more about Ellipsus notifications here.

• Plus other updates, improvements, and fixes

  • We shipped a new website! Now, if you recommend Ellipsus to a friend, they'll be able to see a preview before they sign up. (Plus, we scrapped our scribbly Quentin font, so all text on the site is more legible.)
  • Writing on smaller laptops or tablets wasn't always so pleasant. Now, the editor layout is more responsive, and the right-hand panel should never cover your text.
  • Sometimes the editor would randomly reload while writing, moving your cursor to a new position. Irritating, we know. Happily, the dreaded Whoopsie Doodle (iykyk) has been vanquished.
  • Debugging issues is a little bit easier. Now you can download your console logs and stored data from the settings page and send them to us via in-app chat.

Want to hear about the latest updates as they happen?
Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

WHAT'S NEW

New in Ellipsus: September 2024

Normally, we do our product round-ups on a quarterly basis. But this month was exceptional (in lots of ways! 🫠), so we're giving September its own post.

WRITTEN BY

Kate Donahue

PUBLISH DATE

04/10/2024

Get help while getting started

We welcomed a lot(!) of new writers in September. As we expand our reach, there's a higher chance that new sign-ups are less familiar with us and our product vision. So education, delivered at the right time, is essential.

We've taken the following steps to help first-time writers feel a little more comfortable in Ellipsus.

• A new onboarding survey: Instead of jumping right into the product, we give writers space to adjust their settings and let us know how they're planning to use Ellipsus (i.e., solo or with others).

• An onboarding guide: Previously, new sign-ups ended up in the dashboard. Now, we start them in a document that quickly covers the ins and outs of Ellipsus.

Do more in your dashboard

A dashboard redesign has been a long time coming. The cards were chonky (especially on mobile!) and took up valuable real estate on the screen without offering much additional value.

In addition to shrinking the cards, we've added a few additional bells and whistles to make them more useful.

• Sort docs and folders: Sort documents and folder based on their name, when they were created, or when they were last edited.

• Add descriptions to folders: Describe the purpose of each folder (or subfolder) or your overarching project.

• Check your doc's link-sharing settings: See if a document can be viewed by anyone with the link, or is only visible to collaborators.

• View collaborators: See the avatars and total number of collaborators on a document.

• Spot the number of unmerged drafts: View the total number of active (i.e., unmerged) drafts.

We've also improved folder functionality, making it easier to navigate folders in fewer clicks. When you exit a document, you'll go to its parent folder (or, if it isn't in a folder, back to My work or Shared with me.)

Stay up to date on your docs

In September, we spent time refining where and when we send notifications so that it's easy to follow changes in your documents.

• Get push notifications delivered to your device: Now you can enable push notifications for your web or mobile browser. Just like with our other notifications, you can choose exactly which notification types you receive (i.e., document invites, new comments, comment replies).

• Get notified when any collaborator comments: We've updated the logic behind our comment notifications so that anyone collaborating on a doc will receive comment notifications on drafts. (If you find this too noisy, you can always choose to update your email and push notification settings.)

Other quality-of-life improvements

Work with eight new fonts

Based on your feedback, we've added a few new sans serif (Raleway, Montserrat), serif (Baskervville, Merriweather, EB Garamond), monospaced (Roboto Mono), and handwritten (Caveat) fonts. If you're looking to add some additional flair to your document—or want to temporarily silence your inner editor—there's even a redacted font you can use.

Format faster on mobile

We've adjusted the position of the mobile formatting bar, so that iOS and Android users can enjoy a more consistent experience. Now, you'll find it pinned to the top of the editor.

Let your readers switch between dark and light modes

You love our dark mode, and we thought your readers might too! We've added a light/dark toggle to view-only links, so readers can pick their preferred theme.

Understand when docs are private

If link-sharing isn't enabled, only invited collaborators will be able to view a document. Originally, clicking on a private link led to a 404 message—scary! Instead, we now show a much friendlier 403 message. (Seeing this for your docs? Check that you're logged in.)

See when work syncs

Syncing and performance are always top of mind. We've tweaked our sync indicator to be easier to understand. After discovering that it was too subtle, we made sure that error states were easier to spot and act on. (As it turns out, the sync indicator is a bit too noisy now, so look out for even more improvements in October!)

Want to hear about the latest updates as they happen?
Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

Get your writing into and out of Ellipsus

In October, we worked to make it easier to migrate your older documents, pick up on your WIPs, and share your work.

Import Markdown files

Markdown is an easy-to-use markup language—if you use programs like Discord and Slack, you’ve probably already used basic Markdown to format your text. Our rich text editor has long-supported Markdown shortcuts, so using this language for the first version of our importer was a natural choice.

Now, you can export files from Google Docs, Scrivener, or other sources and import them into Ellipsus.

This is the first of many steps toward a proper .docx importer. But to reach that goal, we need to make our editor more robust (think text colors, more flexible text styles, etc.). Watch this space. 👀

Export to Archive of Our Own

Did you know that 66% of Ellipsus writers have shared their writing on Archive of Our Own? We know that lots of writers struggle with formatting their work for AO3, so we wanted to take the pain out of publishing. (Sorry, whumpers.)

When you’re ready to share, click Export to AO3 — Ellipsus will copy your work as HTML and open AO3 in a new tab. If you’re signed into AO3 on that browser, you can jump right in and post a new work.

Collaborate more efficiently

While we may never make the collaborative process completely mess-free, we can make it much smoother, starting with user experience and additional permissions.

Invite recent collaborators

Entering the same email over and over gets old fast. Ellipsus now suggests your five most recent collaborators, so you can quickly invite them to new documents.

Choose which collaborators can merge

Collaboration can take a lot of forms—from co-authors to beta readers. We want Ellipsus to support these myriad relationships and offer helpful guardrails on how collaborators can (or can’t) interact with your writing.

To kick things off, we’re introducing a new role aimed at writing partners and co-authors. Open the Collaborators modal, enter an email, and choose a role.

• Collaborators who can edit can create and edit drafts, compare drafts to the main document, and collaborate via chat and comments.
• Collaborators who can merge can do all the above, plus they can merge drafts and write directly in the main document.

Along with this change, we’ll now notify you and your collaborators when drafts are merged so you can open the doc and check out the latest changes.

Take control over formatting

You won’t be shocked to learn that writers have Very Strong Opinions about the best way to set up their workspace and get words flowing. Since no two writers are exactly the same, we want to make Ellipsus flexible enough to cater to various workflows.

Format text faster on desktop

Key actions should be easily within reach. And sometimes shortcuts just can’t replace a good ol’ button. We’ve added an (optional!) formatting bar to the bottom of the editor so you can easily style your text and undo/redo actions when working on larger devices.

Set your editor preferences

We want writers to feel comfortable in Ellipsus. Part of that is making sure the functions they need are just a few taps away. Another part is making sure you can easily hide any potential distractions.

We’re introducing editor settings to give you more control over your writing experience.

• Manage smart formatting: Customize quotes, apostrophes, dashes, and ellipses. You can also turn off markdown formatting.
• Update collaboration settings: If you don’t like the feeling of being watched, you can hide live cursors and collaboration avatars.
• Update display settings: Show or hide the desktop formatting bar and word count, and switch between light and dark mode.

Want to hear about the latest updates as they happen? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

Customize your writing and editing experience

In October, we introduced editor settings to put you in control over smart formatting, display settings, and more. This month, we’re adding features that make it easier to mark up and edit your text in whatever way works best for your process.

(They’re also pretty. Because hey, even a minimalist editor can be a little aesthetique. 💅)

Color your text

Yes, text colors are finally here! Make your story more colorful with nine new hues—each with five shades to choose from. Use colors to:

• Differentiate between characters
• Differentiate between collaborators
• Highlight bits of text you want to revisit

Colors can be applied granularly, so you can use the full rainbow across your writing. And get those HEX codes ready—a full palette is on the way!

Use regex with find and replace

Regular expressions (AKA regex) offer a powerful and highly customizable way to search for text. Regex can make it easier to spot patterns and make large-scale changes in your text.

Slightly techy, yes, but you don’t have to be a programmer to benefit from it. You can use regex while editing to:

• Convert straight quotes into curly quotes
• Highlight all dialogue
• Identify and edit adverbs, gerunds, and passive voice

Grab a few examples from our help center to get started.

Set your dark mode preferences

In addition to manually selecting light mode or dark mode, you can set Ellipsus to follow your system preferences—so if your operating system goes from light to dark over the course of a day, Ellipsus will too.

Exit docs, add richer comments

While they’re not the sexiest updates, as a prolific Ellipsus user, these next two changes have absolutely transformed my workflow.

Leave shared documents

Some collabs are ongoing, some are short-term. If you work with enough people across enough documents, your Shared with me can accumulate clutter (not to mention your notifications center).

Now, once you’re done beta-ing or editing, you can leave a document. By default, your exit won’t be announced, but you can always use comments or chat to say farewell before departing.

Create comments that pop

The core writing crew at Ellipsus—John, Rex, and me—we’re long commenters. Suggestions, links, musings, jokes … we jam it all in that little input field.

And my goodness, trying to communicate so much without line breaks or rich text was fucking painful.

Not anymore! Decorate your comments with bold, italics, lists, links, and more. (And soooo many line breaks.)

In addition to making comments 1000x nicer, rich text support lays the technical foundation for early 2025 updates, like @-mentioning commenters.

Import and organize your docs

We’re so happy to see how importing has enabled more writers to switch over to Ellipsus. Full .docx imports are still on the way, but until then, we’ve shipped a few quality-of-life improvements to make managing your imported works more pleasant.

Import moaaaar

A handful of writers have already imported more than 100 docs into Ellipsus. 🤯 We respect the commitment to centralizing your work, so we’ve shipped some improvements to streamline the process. With these updates, you can:

• Import multiple Markdown files at once.
• Import files directly into a folder.
• Import files without automatically opening them in Ellipsus.

Display non-printing characters

We’re also making it easier to clean up your docs post-import. Docs imported from another tool can look a little different in Ellipsus, generally due to our default font and spacing options. And since not all tools visually differentiate between paragraph and line breaks, Ellipsus imports might look a tad … spacious.

Head to editor settings and enable Invisible characters to show spaces, line breaks, and paragraph breaks in your doc. Then, you can manually adjust your spacing (use return / enter for a paragraph break or shift + return / shift + enter for a line break) or adjust your line height and paragraph spacing to update your doc.

Write anything in Ellipsus

All writing—and all writers—are welcome in Ellipsus, but there’s a special place in our hearts for the creative writers who’ve been quick to adopt and celebrate what we’re building. Many people have flocked to Ellipsus because they (rightfully) have concerns about how their writing might be monitored, scraped, or censored by other tools.

To make sure our stances on privacy (we’re for it), generative AI (we’re against it), and transformative works (❤️ AO3) are clear, we’ve revised our privacy policy and terms of service. Nothing’s materially changed, but the language should be much, much clearer. Here’s the gist:

• Your data is yours. We won’t access, sell, or use your personal information for nefarious purposes. Ever.
• We won’t police your content. We’re a writing tool—we don’t host published works. We strongly believe in creative expression, and you’re free to write whatever you want. (Just don’t commit crimes or use Ellipsus to harm yourself or others, pretty please.)
• We’ll always keep you in the loop. These docs are a WIP—we may update them to reflect changes to how we operate, prevent abuse, or better safeguard and serve our writers. When there are significant changes, we’ll let you know first. We want you to feel safe and confident when storing your work in Ellipsus.

Want to hear about the latest updates as they happen? Join our Discord to follow announcements and share your feedback.

Original source

Ellipsus + AO3

Archive of Our Own, the proverbial phoenix that rose from the ashes of the LiveJournal and
FanFiction.net
purges, is now an institution all its own. And over the years we’ve been contributors, lurkers, and fierce admirers. After all, unapologetic creativity is a shared ethos.

Many of our writers consider AO3 a home—if not
the home
—for their work. So we wanted to make sharing that work simpler.
Back in October, we released a streamlined way to copy HTML out of Ellipsus and paste it into AO3. And writers were …
very
excited about it.

You either die an anonymous product manager, or live long enough to become a deep-fried PNG.

We can always count on our community to encourage us to continue iterating. Within a few hours of the release we received this note:

Oh I just tried it and its incredible, the only thing is, it redirects to ao3 after copying and starts a new ao3 fic but sometimes (most of the times for me at least) its an update to a fic not a new fic

Fair! Of course our writers aren’t limiting their creativity to one-shots. They’re also tending to multi-chapter works (and massive ones, at that). We wanted to help those writers too.

What is Archive of Our Own?

For the uninitiated:
Archive of Our Own
is a project managed by the
Organization for Transformative Works
. The non-profit, non-commercial archive hosts transformative fanworks, in particular, fan fiction. The mainstream might think AO3 is niche, but with
millions
of page views per day it’s anything but. Occasionally, the fan works hosted there even bleed into the public consciousness—just this week creator
DRHPaints
was name-dropped on podcast
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

Why build a better way to post to AO3?

Across Reddit, Tumblr, and other social platforms,
what’s the best way to post to AO3
is a recurring topic.

Major pain points include preserving spacing and text decorations (like bold and italics) when copying and pasting, preventing random spaces from being inserted, and the general annoyance of having to clean up HTML tags. (And if you’re trying to post from your phone??? 💀💀💀)

We’re certainly not the first to answer the call.
AO3 officially endorses a script for Google Docs
, and independent developers have created tools like
AOYeet
.

But as more writers
look for alternatives to Google Docs and Microsoft Word
, they’ll need new ways to format their AO3 writing—ideally without having to juggle multiple tools.

Create new works, add new chapters

Today, we’re expanding our support for sharing to AO3. In addition to posting new works, you can now manage and update existing ones. You’ll still need to manage titles, creators, and metadata directly in AO3—but generating nicely formatted HTML for your main text is reduced to a few clicks.

Post new works

Make sure you’re logged in to AO3 in the current browser. Then open
Share and export
and click
Export to AO3
to open a sharing modal. From there, you can select

• New work
  to copy the current doc or draft as HTML—we’ll automatically open AO3 in a new tab so you can paste your text and prepare your work for posting.

View existing works

After clicking
Export to AO3
, you can enter your username to generate a list of your current works on AO3. Your username will be saved to the current browser—a big time-saver if there are multiple Ellipsus docs meant for AO3. (We use AO3’s publicly available URLs to pull in works and chapters-
you’ll only be able to post to AO3 if you’re logged into your linked account.
)

By default, this list will be ordered by your most recent works. (But search is coming soon!)

After finding the work you want to update, you can choose to post a new chapter or edit an existing one. Select an option and Ellipsus will copy your current draft or doc to your clipboard and open AO3 in a new tab.

Help shape what’s next

In 2025, we plan to extend our export options and even dip our digital toes into integrations. So, what do you want to see?
Add your ideas to our feedback board
or
join our Discord
to share your thoughts with the team!

Original source

A look back at 2024

2024 was a year full of surprises! Before we close this chapter, we’re presenting a few more goodies.

It’s hard to believe how much Ellipsus has changed over the past year. In just 12 months—and with a team of seven—we shipped more than 20 major features. (If you’re feeling nostalgic, check out all our releases here.)

And our raison d'être is more relevant than ever. Between the ongoing developments and news around generative AI, the potential consequences of the US election, and the general what-the-fuck-is-happening of it all, writers are (rightfully) concerned about having the freedom to write what they want, where they want, without worrying about censorship, data loss, or persecution. We’re humbled by your trust in our product and will continue to do right by you.

Without further ado, our final updates for the year!

Create and edit AO3 chapters

In October, we introduced the first version of our AO3 export, which enabled writers to copy their docs as HTML and create new works.

Now, we’re making it possible to generate a list of your existing works so you can create new chapters or edit existing ones.

We did a deep dive into this feature in a recent blog post so that you can see it in action.

Share snippets of your WIPs

Earlier this year, we started noticing screenshots of Ellipsus docs in the wild. So we built snippet-sharing directly into Ellipsus. Now, you can select up to 150 words and create a shareable, stylized image fit for any platform. Choose between seven background colors and three sizes (landscape, portrait, and square), then download the image to your device and share it anywhere.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Get tips on collaborative writing

We surveyed 350+ writers a few months ago to learn more about their collaborative behaviors, including common challenges and tips for overcoming them.

John and Rex have been recapping the findings over on the blog. Check them out if you’re looking for ways to forge and nurture better writing relationships.

• Getting Started with Collaborative Writing
• Working with Co-Authors
• Working with Beta Readers and Editors

Stay tuned for their final article on the importance of writing communities.

Connect with other writers

Speaking of communities!

At the start of 2024, our Discord had about 100 members. We’re closing out the year with just under 1,500. Our server has grown into a place where people share and get actionable feedback on their writing, where writers find beta readers and collaborators, and where people can connect over their myriad interests.

In December, we tackled some much-needed improvements, adding roles, dedicated writer-finder channels, and a sprint bot. If you want to expand your writing community in 2025, come check it out for yourself!

Join the Discord

Original source

Pick your preferred theme

Getting a writing project going involves setting the right vibe. To help you get those creative juices flowing, we’re adding three new themes to Ellipsus.

• Sepia: A cozy palette of beiges and browns reminiscent of parchment.
• Nature: A palette of deep greens, like strolling through a tranquil forest.
• Ultra dark: An ink-black backdrop for your work.

Themes are stored on each browser / device where you use Ellipsus, so you can set one theme for your laptop and one for your phone.
What’s the future of themes? Think more palettes and more granularity (e.g., setting Nature for your fantasy story and using Ultra dark for something horror-related).
What theme would you like to see next?
Add your ideas here.

Meet your new dashboard

We’ve given the dashboard a much-needed glow-up.
On desktop, you’ll see a (collapsible) sidebar, where you can access work you’ve created, docs shared with you, your settings, and support materials. On mobile, you’ll see a bottom bar that puts key action within thumb’s reach.
Beyond looking much cleaner, this change sets the stage for future improvements like list view (!!!), favoriting, and more.
Watch this space.

Make your snippets pop

It warms our hearts to see your snippets when we’re lurking around the web. But they were missing something very important—the ability to shape visual emphasis. Italics can shift the meaning of sentence, or express a character's inner thoughts; bold text can heighten tensions in a heated argument… we want your words to come across loud and clear.

Now, text colors, bold, italics, underlines, and strikethroughs are supported in snippets, preserving all emphasis, no matter where your writing is shared.

Move faster with UX improvements

In some ways, Ellipsus will always feel different to tools like Google Docs and Scrivener. But some patterns bear repeating, especially when they help make writing, sharing, and collaborating easier. In January, we shipped a few small updates that should make Ellipsus a little more pleasant to use.

• New drafts can be created from a plus sign in the left-hand panel of the editor.
• Comment annotations have a different color than text selections.
• Document links can be copied by right-clicking on dashboard cards.

Writing in the age of erasure

We’re not going to mince words: The world is suddenly a much scarier place than it was just months ago. Project 2025 is no longer a vague nightmare—it’s more tangible each day—and fascism seems suddenly back in vogue.

In times when marginalized voices are threatened, it’s more important than ever to keep writing. Our co-founder Rex wrote a post summarizing the current state of affairs. I’ll leave you with a few words from him.

Empathy is one of the most valuable resources we have, and in the darkest times writers armed with nothing but words have exposed injustice, changed culture, and kept their communities connected.

Rex Mizrach

Original source