Customizing suggestions
What’s in this article:
Intro to suggestions
Writer checks content for all of the basics: spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We also check for advanced issues such as writing style, clarity, inclusive writing, and delivery. The goal is to make sure your team’s writing is clear, consistent, and error-free.
Suggestions work right out of the box, so all you have to do is start writing in the Writer Editor or install a Writer app. If Writer finds an error, you’ll see an underline or highlight on the flagged text and the correction in a card on hover.
You can customize everything that comes out of suggestions in Writer, including the basic checks.
Examples of popular suggestion customizations:
- Use an Oxford comma (or not!)
- Always introduce acronyms when first mentioned
- Never use the 🤮 emoji
- Use sentence case for headlines and headers
- Avoid writing in passive voice
- Write times like 7PM and not 7 p.m.
- Use gender-inclusive nouns if possible – e.g., “police officer” and not “policeman”
- Avoid wordy phrases — e.g., say “Clearly, the report shows” instead of “It’s clearly evident that the report shows”
- Write confidently — e.g., write “We should meet next week” rather than “I think we should meet next week”
Customizing suggestions
Writer already has default suggestions settings in place from the moment you create your account. You can customize suggestions in the Writer app. Remember that updates to suggestions settings apply to your whole team, not just you.
If you’ve unchecked a category in suggestions, Writer will no longer check that category.
For example, if you don’t want to give any guidance on exclamation mark usage at all, you can simply uncheck that category:
You can turn off punctuation or grammar checks completely, which you may want to do if you are using Writer to check poetry (it happens). You can restore punctuation and grammar checks by simply toggling the category back on.
And for punctuation:
Sharing your suggestions preferences
Once you’ve customized your suggestions in Writer, you can share them in just a few clicks with your style guide. The style guide allows you to share your preferences with people outside Writer.
In Style guide>Page Builder, select a Suggestions page block , then select Writing Style.
By creating this block, you’ve imported your punctuation and writing style settings with just one select. Any suggestions that you toggled or checked off when customizing suggestions won’t show here at all. You can customize the text with examples from your company context and bring examples to life with images.
Once you publish this page, it’s available for anyone with the URL (and password, if set) to view.
Creating a suggestions page block is a one-time import. If you make changes after you create this page, you’ll just need to go back to your style guide Page Builder. Once there, you can delete the block you previously added and add it again to re-import the latest suggestion settings.
Learn more about the style guide with this deeper dive article and video walkthrough.
Reporting
The Suggestions Found Report shows you how many suggestions Writer found across categories. You can adjust by date and timescale and filter by users, Team, and suggestion type.
You can find the report in Admin>Reporting.
FAQs
Q: Under Clarity, which should I use: Writer Readability Level or Flesch-Kincaid?
The Writer Readability Level is a deep learning model that evaluates readability through inputs such as sentence length, vocabulary, syntax, and fluency.
Flesch-Kincaid is based on a readability formula that considers the length of a sentence and the number of syllables in those words:
0.39 x (words/sentences) + 11.8 x (syllables/words) - 15.59
Q: Why is my team receiving so many suggestions to break up sentences?
You may have set your readability level too low. Sometimes a low readability level is a good thing (especially if you do need your team's writing to be simple), but if your team finds itself ignoring these suggestions frequently, you may want to revisit the level you've configured.
Q: What’s included in your Inclusivity suggestions?
We’ve developed this feature in close partnership with customers who have been leading diversity and inclusion initiatives at their respective organizations. In keeping with the golden rule of “above all else, ask the person what they prefer,” we’ve also carefully considered guidance posted from communities themselves.
Resources on inclusive language:
- Writer Guide: Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
- National Center on Disability and Journalism
- The Diversity Style Guide
- GLAAD Media Reference Guide
Q: How do I change my spellcheck to UK/US English?
Writer supports four spelling models: American English, United Kingdom English, Australian English, and Canadian English. You can change your preferences from the Setup > General page. Any changes you make here apply to all of the users on your Team.
Writer currently only supports grammar and spelling checks in English.
Q: Can Writer suggestions follow specific formatting?
While Writer can apply powerful analysis to the content of a document, it doesn't analyze the formatting of a document.
- Bold and italics are supported in Writer, but aren't applied automatically via suggestions. You'll need to manually select the text you'd like to format and apply the formatting via the Formatting toolbar.
- Writer doesn't support headings or other styles, though these can be manually applied via the Formattin toolbar.
- Writer doesn't support line spacing adjustments.
- Writer suggestions aren't formatted into bulleted or numbered lists. You can manually arrange your document into bulleted or numbered lists using the Formatting toolbar.
- Writer doesn't support a Table of Contents feature. If you would like to add a Table of Contents to your document, you'll need to manually add the links and formatting using the Formatting toolbar.
Q: What if we don't have an internal decision around one of the writing rule options?
Maybe your team doesn't have any preference on how your team uses ellipses or how you format measurements. That's okay! You can either make an internal decision and configure the rules, or you can opt to leave the suggestions turned off.
Q: What suggestions are Included in my Plan?
Enterprise plans
✅ All suggestions categories and custom writing rules
Team plans
✅ All suggestions categories
Free users
Spelling, grammar, and punctuation only
Q: How can I create a custom rule?
If you're on an Enterprise plan, the Writer team can help you! Reach out to your CSM to get started.