Getting started: 5 steps

Learn the fundamentals of Writer with these short videos on the basics.

Teams that have transformed their writing have done these five things after setting up a Writer account. Some will take a few minutes and others a few hours — either way, the short videos below walk you through the fundamentals of each of the five key steps.

New to Writer? Read our What is Writer? article for a quick product overview.

Step 1. Install a plugin

Go to Apps in the bottom-left menu to find Writer apps and extensions.

You can select one or more plugins based on where you write:

For web-based applications (Gmail, Google Docs, WordPress, etc), select Writer Chrome extension.
For Microsoft Word, select Writer for Word.
For Microsoft Outlook, select Writer for Outlook.
For Figma, select Writer for Figma.

Step 2. Customize suggestions

Though Writer will give you great writing suggestions out-of-the-box, you can customize your suggestions to your own in-house writing style and guidelines.

Setup is where you can configure everything related to how you want your team to write. This includes:

Punctuation preferences
Rules about introducing acronyms
Capitalization
Date and number formatting
Target grade/reading level
Active versus passive voice
Inclusive language
Setting an English locale for spelling (US, UK, Canada, or Australia)

Go to Setup in the left menu to customize writing suggestions to your preferences.

Learn more about suggestions with this deeper dive article and video.

Step 3. Add your company terms

Go to Terms in the left menu to set up your company terminology and word lists.

In Writer, you can set which terms you want your team to use (Approved terms), which terms to avoid (Don’t Use terms), which terms to use in certain contexts (Use Carefully terms) and terms which are commonly misspelled or misused (Common Mistakes).

Learn more about terms with this deeper dive article and video.

Step 4. Add content snippets

A snippet is a sentence, paragraph, or set of paragraphs which your team uses frequently across your writing. By saving it with a shortcut, Writer can expand it for you anywhere you’re writing.

The types of content that can go in snippets include:

Mission statements
Marketing boilerplate
Employee bios
UX copy
Disclaimer language
Canned emails
Any repeatable phrases or sentences that you want to write consistently

Learn more about snippets with this deeper dive article.

Step 5. Set up and share your style guide

You can use Writer to publish your style guidelines at a password-protected site at styleguide.com — so you can share your rules with anyone.

When you update your terms and snippets, the content on these pages will automatically update your style guide.

Learn more about building a style guide with this deeper dive article.