The Page
A blank page for distraction-free writing.
About this page
A blank page set in Garamond, for morning pages, drafts, letters, or whatever needs an empty sheet. A word count sits in one corner and autosave in the other: the page keeps your text as you write, and it is waiting when you come back. When a draft is done, the download button hands it to you as a plain text file.
Questions
Where does my text go?
It stays in this browser, saved to local storage on your device, and reappears when you return. Clearing the browser’s site data clears the page too, so download anything you want to keep.
Does the page autosave?
Yes—a moment after you pause typing, and again when you leave. Ctrl-S (Cmd-S on a Mac) saves on the spot, and a note in the corner confirms it.
Can I save my writing as a file?
The download button in the top right saves the page as a plain .txt file named after today’s date.
Can I write in fullscreen?
Yes. The fullscreen button clears away everything but the paper, with the word count for company; moving the mouse brings the controls back.
What is on the shelf?
Nine small things, borrowed from the other instruments and kept behind the lines button in the corner: a 25-and-5 writing timer whose only trace is a thin line along the top of the screen, rain and brown noise to write inside, typewriter scrolling that keeps your line centered, a row of style buttons for headings, bold, links and lists, the typographic marks, a tidy button that curls quotes and sets dashes right, a clear button that empties the page in one click, a fuller count, and the light—light, dark, or following the sky over your city. Close the panel and the page is as bare as it ever was.
Can I make a heading, or bold a word?
Select the words and a small bubble comes to them, with headings, bold, italic, a link, a quote and two kinds of list—or press Ctrl-B and Ctrl-I (Cmd on a Mac) as you write. With nothing selected the buttons work on the line the cursor is on, and pressing one again takes its marks back off. On a phone or a tablet the buttons come to the foot of the screen instead of the text, since the system puts its own Cut and Copy over a selection and two bars in one place help nobody; if a keyboard is up, they sit above it. They are on the shelf as well, under Style, which is where to reach them for a line the cursor is merely sitting on—that row names what it is about to mark, since the shelf covers the writing on a small screen.
What do the marks in my text mean?
They are Markdown: # before a line makes it a heading, **a pair of asterisks** marks bold, _underscores_ italic, > a quotation, - and 1. the two lists. The page stays plain text, so nothing is hidden from you—and the file you download opens as formatted writing in anything that reads Markdown, and as itself everywhere else.
Can I undo a clear?
Clearing takes two presses—the first arms the button, reading “clear?” for three seconds, and the second empties the page—so a stray click never costs a draft. After it clears, the button reads Undo for fifteen seconds and brings the text back. After that it’s gone, so download first if you want to keep it.
What does typewriter scrolling do?
Turned on from the shelf, it keeps the line you’re writing near the middle of the screen, scrolling the page to follow your cursor through longer drafts, and adds a soft mechanical click for every keystroke. It is off by default. Like the rain and the noise, the click is synthesized live in your browser—nothing recorded, nothing streamed.
What if I am drafting in HTML?
Tidy leaves the tags alone. Attribute quotes stay straight, so class="lede" survives untouched, and a quote that opens a paragraph is read against the prose before it rather than the > of its tag—it curls as “, not ”.
Does the shelf send anything anywhere?
No. The timer keeps time inside the page and never asks to send notifications, the rain and the noise are synthesized live in your browser—no recordings, nothing streamed—and the sky is computed from the clock and your time zone. Like the page itself, the shelf never lets your writing leave your device.
More instruments: a blank page to draw on, a word counter and a text cleaner—or see all of them. From the writing: Written in Ink.