Marking up a paper someone sent you

Opening the paper

Click the link the writer sent and the paper opens in the editor. The text sits in the middle. The mark palette is on the right edge, collapsed to a thin strip until you open it.

The first time you place a mark, Red Stet asks for your name and initials — "Sign your edits." Type them once. They stay in this browser, and your initials ride along on every note so the writer knows which comments are yours, not someone else's.

You're never editing the writer's file. Your marks live in your copy on top of their words. They read them back as suggestions.

The palette — click a mark onto the text

The palette is the strip on the right labeled Editorial Marks. Click it to expand it. Each row is one mark: a symbol, a name, and a one-line description of what it does.

To use one, select the words you're marking first, then click the mark. The mark lands on your selection.

• Insert drops a caret where your cursor is so you can type new text in.
• Wrong word, Awkward, Too wordy, Run-on, and the rest under Editorial underline the phrase and open a margin note, so you can say what you mean.
• Italicize, Bold, Capitalize, and the Typography marks just apply — no note needed.

There's a second panel, Punctuation & spacing, to the left of the first — periods, commas, quotes, dashes. Same idea: select, click.

Typing in line with the cursor

Most edits never need the palette. Put your cursor in the text and type — your keystrokes don't overwrite anything, they become a red suggestion right where the cursor is. Press Enter to keep it, Esc to throw it away.

The four things you'll do most

• Add words. Click where a word is missing, type it, press Enter. It carets in as red handwriting above the line.
• Replace words. Select the words you don't like, type the replacement, press Enter. Red Stet strikes the old and writes in the new.
• Delete words. Select them and hit Delete (or Backspace). They get a strike-through.
• Fix punctuation. Put the cursor where it belongs, type the mark (a period, a comma), press Enter. It becomes the proper proofreader mark.

The shortcut codes

Every palette mark also has a short code, shown on its right. Select a phrase, type the code, press Enter, and you get that mark without touching the palette:

• ww — wrong word · awk — awkward · wdw — too wordy · ?? — this is unclear
• i — italic · b — bold · u — underline · sp — spell it out

The comment codes (ww, awk, ??) open a margin note so you can explain. The formatting codes just apply.

Margin notes

A margin note is a comment tied to a spot in the text — the place for anything you can't say with a mark alone. "This paragraph repeats the intro." "Great line." "Do you have a source for this?"

Two ways to leave one:

• Select a phrase, then type. Click Margin note in the palette (or select the phrase and press +), then type your comment. The phrase gets underlined and a line runs out to your note.
• Click the + in the margin. A small + sits next to each line. Click it to drop a note on that line without selecting anything.

Your initials sit on every note, so when the writer reads through, they know the note is from you.

The editorial memo memo

The memo is your letter to the writer — the big-picture feedback that doesn't attach to one sentence. Marks and notes handle the line-level work; the memo is where you say "the argument doesn't land until page three" or "cut the second section and the piece gets stronger."

Open it from 📝 Editorial memo in the sidebar, or the notepad button in the bottom-right corner. A panel slides in with two fields:

• Title — a heading, e.g. Structural notes on the draft.
• Body — the letter itself. Write as much as you want. Plain text or markdown.

It saves on its own — there's no save button, and the bottom of the panel reads Per-document · saves automatically. The writer reads it as a letter, one memo per paper.

When you're done

There's nothing to save. Everything you place — marks, notes, the memo — is already saved to this paper as you go. The status line at the bottom keeps a running count: 12 marks · 4 notes.

To get your edits back to the writer, open ⤓ Download in the sidebar and pick a format. The annotated .docx carries your marks over as tracked changes and your notes as comments — the writer opens it in Word and sees everything in place. Send that file back the way they sent it to you.

That's the whole job: read, mark what you'd change, explain the big things in the memo, download, send back.

Next steps

→ Your first document — if you want to write in Red Stet yourself, not just edit.

→ Back to the help library for more topics.

Missing something? Email feedback — this doc grows by use.