CreativeFree
Check your manuscript for spelling and typos
Paste your writing and get a comment on each misspelling, typo and repeated word, with invented names, dialect and your style left alone.
River reads your short story, chapter, poem or manuscript for spelling and typing errors only, and leaves a comment on each one with the correction. It looks for misspelled words, doubled words like "and and", wrong homophones such as your and you're, missing apostrophes and dropped letters. Your text stays exactly as you wrote it. You decide which corrections to accept, so nothing changes in your voice, your punctuation choices or the shape of your sentences.
General spell checkers often struggle with fiction and poetry. They flag every invented name and every line of dialect, and they can miss correctly spelled words that sit in the wrong place. River leaves invented names alone, but flags them when the same name is spelled two ways. It treats deliberate dialect and nonstandard spelling in dialogue as part of a character's voice. Pick American, British, Canadian or Australian spelling and it holds the whole piece to that one consistently.
This is for fiction writers, poets and memoirists doing a last careful pass before sending work to an agent, editor, contest or reader. It is a careful second read, not a guarantee of a clean manuscript, so for anything important combine it with a read-through of your own, ideally aloud or on paper. River lists anything it is unsure about separately, so you can settle the borderline cases quickly before working through the clear corrections.
Why your own typos are hard to see
Writers miss their own typos because they know what the sentence should say. When you read your own work, your mind predicts the words and fills in what's missing, so a doubled "the" or "form" for "from" slips by. The more times you've revised a passage, the more fluently you read it, and the less you actually see. Fresh eyes help because they read what is on the page, not what you meant to put there.
Not every typo is a misspelling, which is why they survive so many drafts. Some of the most common errors are real words in the wrong place: their for there, its for it's, loose for lose. Ordinary spell checkers often pass these because each word is spelled correctly. Others appear during revision, when half of an old sentence survives next to the new one. These are the errors most worth a careful final read, because to a reader they look like the writer's own choice.
Fiction adds its own complications to proofreading. Invented names should be spelled the same way every time, and drift is common across a long draft written over months. Dialect and nonstandard spelling in dialogue are choices, not errors. American and British spelling each work if used consistently, but mixing colour with color reads as a slip. Decide which conventions you're following, then check that the whole manuscript follows them from the first page to the very last.
How it works
Paste your writing
Paste a story, chapter or poem, or attach the file you want checked.
Pick your spelling
Choose American, British, Canadian or Australian spelling, or let River infer it from the text.
Read the comments
Each comment sits on the error and gives the correction, and your text is unchanged.
Accept what fits
Fix the errors you agree with, ignore the deliberate ones, and check the uncertain list.
What you get
- A comment on each misspelling and typo, with the correction written out
- Wrong homophones caught, such as your and you're, or their and there
- Doubled words, dropped letters and missing apostrophes marked exactly where they occur in your text
- Invented names left alone, but flagged when one is spelled two different ways
- Dialect in dialogue and deliberate spellings treated as voice, not as errors
- American, British, Canadian or Australian spelling applied consistently across the whole piece
Common questions
Will it flag invented names in fantasy or science fiction?
No, not on their own. River assumes unfamiliar names and terms are deliberate. It does flag an invented name that appears with two spellings, such as Kaelith and Kalieth, and asks which one you meant. If a made-up word looks like a typo of a real word nearby, it is listed as uncertain rather than corrected.
Does it check grammar and style too?
No. It looks only at spelling and typing errors, including wrong homophones and doubled words. It doesn't comment on commas, sentence fragments, passive voice or word choice. Many writers prefer it that way, because fiction breaks grammar rules on purpose. If you want feedback on the prose itself, ask for that separately after the check.
What about dialect and deliberate misspellings in dialogue?
They're treated as voice. If a character says "gonna" or drops the g in "nothin'", River leaves it alone. It will flag a spelling that is inconsistent within the same character's speech, because readers notice when a voice drifts. Narration is held to standard spelling unless the narration itself is clearly written in dialect.
Will River change my text?
No. Your writing goes into the document exactly as you pasted it, and every correction is a comment. You accept or ignore each one yourself. If you'd like a corrected copy as well, ask after the check, and River writes it separately, changing only the spelling and typos it flagged.
Can this replace a human proofreader?
No, and it doesn't claim to catch everything. It's a careful extra pass. For a submission that matters, combine it with your own read-through, ideally on paper or aloud, and use a human proofreader for anything going to print. Real words in the wrong place are the hardest errors for anyone to catch.
Should I check spelling before or after other edits?
After. Revising sentences creates new typos, especially doubled or leftover words where you rewrote half a line. Run the spelling check as the final pass, once the structure and prose are settled. If you're still making big changes, a check now will only need repeating later, so save it for the end.
Check your manuscript for spelling and typos
Describe what you need, add any files you have, and your workspace opens with the work already underway.