Checking manuscript…
Widow
Orphan
Heading break
Scene break
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100%TypeDoctor prepares a book manuscript for print. It paginates your text exactly the way the exported PDF and Word files will paginate it, finds and fixes widows and orphans, places images and collages, and exports print-ready files. Everything runs in this one file, in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; your manuscript never leaves your computer.
▶ Continue Your Project reopens the project saved in this browser. + Start New Project begins with one empty chapter. 🎬 Try Demo loads three sample chapters so you can explore safely. 📂 Load Saved Project (.tdoc) opens a project file saved earlier, from any computer.
The left sidebar holds your chapters, page setup, typography, verso plates, exports, and the portable project file. The center is the live page preview, exactly as pages will print. The right panel holds widow/orphan correction, your signature, title graphic, and overlays.
The colored bar at the top of the preview watches your manuscript continuously. Green means the manuscript looks healthy. Yellow means minor issues were detected. Red means problems need attention. Click the bar to jump to the first problem. Tick Beep on new problem if you want an audible alert the moment a new issue appears while you work.
Each chapter is its own text block with its own images and verso plate settings. The chapter list is in the sidebar; click a chapter to make it active. The preview always shows the active chapter.
+ Add Chapter creates a new empty chapter. ↑ Import File reads a .txt, .docx, or .rtf file into a new chapter. Word documents are read directly; you do not need to convert them first.
Click ✎ Edit Text in the toolbar to edit the active chapter's text in place, then click it again to return to preview. Pagination and widow/orphan analysis update as soon as you finish.
TypeDoctor keeps the original text of every imported chapter untouched in the background, no matter what edits or corrections happen afterward. The status line in this section tells you whether the active chapter still matches its original.
↺ Restore Original Text throws away every change made to the active chapter and returns it to exactly what was imported. This is your safety net; it cannot be defeated by any other feature.
Replace Em Dashes → Commas (this chapter) converts em dashes to commas in the active chapter only. Replace Em Dashes → Commas (whole manuscript) does the same across every chapter. Either action can be reversed per chapter with Restore Original Text.
The Trim Size dropdown sets the physical page your book will print at. Pick one of the built-in presets (each option shows its name and dimensions) or choose Custom to enter your own width, height, and margin in inches. The default is the standard 6×9 trade paperback.
Changing trim size re-paginates the whole manuscript instantly, and every image and collage re-solves its layout for the new page width automatically, so page breaks in the preview always match what will export.
Body font selects the typeface for your book's body text from serif faces detected on this computer. Font size runs 9–16 pt. Line spacing runs 1.2–2.0. First-line indent toggles the classic paragraph indent. Scene break picks the ornament printed between scenes (asterism by default); each option previews its symbol in the dropdown.
🔤 Check Manuscript Fonts opens a report of every font your manuscript wants versus what this machine actually has. For any missing font it names the closest installed substitute being used. If you own the real font file, click Load Font File in that report and select a .ttf, .otf, .woff, or .woff2 file; TypeDoctor loads it immediately and re-paginates with the true metrics.
A widow is a too-short last line of a paragraph; an orphan is a paragraph's first line stranded alone at the bottom of a page. TypeDoctor measures every line with the same engine that produces the exports, so what it flags is what would actually print.
The flags legend above the preview shows the four colors: blue = widow, orange = orphan, purple = heading break problem, green = scene break marker.
Auto-correct (recommended) is on by default. The engine quietly adjusts spacing within tolerances a reader cannot perceive to pull widows back and push orphans forward. Turn it off to see the raw, uncorrected layout.
The min. words on last line setting (2, 3, or 4) defines how short a last line must be before it counts as a widow. Stricter settings flag more paragraphs.
Below the controls, every remaining issue is listed with its type, paragraph number, and page number. Click any item to jump the preview straight to it, so you can fix stubborn cases by hand with a small edit.
Click 📍 Insert Image, then click the position in the preview where the image belongs; banners between paragraphs show every legal insertion point. Choose your image file and set its options in the insert dialog: width on the page, the DPI readout (with Set max width for this to cap width at print-safe resolution), and Remove Background if the image needs it.
The moment you enter placement mode (Insert Image, Insert Signature, or Insert Collage), a Find text… box appears in the toolbar with the cursor ready. Type a few words from the passage where the image belongs and the preview jumps to the paragraph containing them, briefly highlighting it. Press Enter to cycle through further matches; the counter shows which match you are on and which chapter it is in. The search covers every chapter, your active chapter first, and switches chapters automatically when the match is elsewhere, with placement mode staying active. Press Escape to clear the search. Then click the insertion banner above or below the highlighted paragraph as usual.
Remove Background opens a tool with three modes. Wand clicks away a matching area, and Auto Remove reads the whole border of the image, averages it into one background colour, and clears everything matching it inward. Leave Black & white line art ticked for pen, ink and engraving art: it matches on brightness rather than colour, which is both quicker and much more accurate right at the edge of the ink. Auto-refine sweeps up isolated stray pixels afterwards, which is what lets Trim empty edges on apply pull tight against the real artwork so the padding you choose is the only white space left under the text.
For anything the automatic pass misses, switch to Erase to paint areas away or Restore to paint them back. Both brushes have size, hardness and opacity, and a ring on screen shows the exact footprint. Hardness sets how much of the brush stays at full strength before it fades out to the rim, so a small brush at low opacity works a single pixel at a time. Hold and drag to paint continuously; each stroke counts as one undo step. For hair, fine linework and ragged edges, use a small brush at 40–60% opacity and make several light passes rather than one heavy one. Tolerance controls how close a colour must be to count as background, Grow removal nudges the cut inward or outward, and Feather edge softens the boundary without ever eating into the artwork.
Click any placed image in the preview to open its floating toolbar: a width slider (10–100% of the text width), align left / center / right buttons, ✂ Edit to reopen its dialog, and Remove. You can also drag an image in the preview to move it to a different insertion point.
🗑 Remove All Images in the toolbar strips every image from the active chapter in one action (it asks first).
The background remover opens from the image dialog. Auto Remove takes the first pass; the brush cleans up by hand; grow/feather refine the edge. This tool has its own full Undo / Redo / Reset, so nothing here is ever final until you click Apply.
Click 🖼🖼 Insert Collage, pick an insertion point, and the collage builder opens. A collage holds 2–6 images arranged in one of eleven layout shapes. TypeDoctor's collage math never crops or distorts a photo: every image keeps its native aspect ratio, every row and column lands flush with the frame edges, and the solver picks exact sizes to make that true.
Single row, two balanced rows, three balanced rows, two balanced columns, three balanced columns, large image left / right / top / bottom with the remaining images alongside, and more. Auto arrange scores every arrangement against your actual photos' proportions and picks the best fit. Image one is always the featured (large) image in the feature layouts; use the reorder arrows in the builder to choose which photo gets the spotlight. Shuffle, reorder, and remove buttons sit under each slot.
The border dropdown offers Borderless (default), Thin, Medium, and Thick, plus a color picker. Borders draw as an overlay, so adding or changing them never shifts the solved layout or your page breaks, on screen, in the PDF, or in the Word export.
Type a caption and choose above or below. Captions print in your body font, italic, centered, slightly smaller than body size. The caption's exact wrapped height is measured and included in pagination, so a collage with a caption breaks pages identically in preview and in every export.
Select a placed collage to get the same floating toolbar as a single image; the width slider (10–100%) resizes the entire collage, re-solving the internal layout at the new width. The builder dialog has the same slider. Padding above and below the collage is set in the builder.
🖋 Upload Signature stores your signature image once. Then 🖋 Insert Signature in the toolbar places it like any image, ideal for a signed dedication or author's note. 🅰 Upload Title Graphic stores decorative title artwork for use on chapter openings.
Once uploaded, your signature can also be stamped directly onto any image: the Insert/Adjust Image dialog has an Include my signature on this image checkbox. Check it and the signature is added as a small overlay in the bottom-right corner of that image; uncheck it to remove it. Re-opening an image that already carries one shows the checkbox already checked. Its position, size, feather and fade are then fine-tuned the same way as any other overlay — see Overlays below.
In traditional book design, chapters open on the recto (right-hand, odd-numbered) page, and the facing verso (left-hand) page can carry a full-page image, the chapter plate. TypeDoctor manages both.
Chapters always start on recto (odd page) is on by default; TypeDoctor inserts blank pages as needed so every chapter opens on the right.
If your title page, copyright page, and other front matter are made separately and merged in later, enter how many pages they occupy in Pages of front matter preceding this file. TypeDoctor shifts its odd/even calculation so chapter openings still land correctly in the final merged book.
With a chapter active, click 🖼 Set Verso Plate Image. Choose Full bleed (image fills the page edge to edge) or Inset with padding. In inset mode you control padding in inches, image width as a percent of the frame, X and Y position sliders, and an optional caption below the image (a scripture verse or credit line, for example). The DPI readout warns you if the image is too small to print sharply at the chosen size. Force plate even if chapter already starts on recto inserts the plate spread regardless of where the chapter would naturally fall.
✨ Add Overlay superimposes your signature or title graphic on top of a specific page, or on top of an image already placed in the chapter, rather than flowing it inside the text — for stamps, seals, marginal ornaments, or a signature that must sit at an exact spot. Overlays do not affect pagination at all; the text underneath flows as if they were not there. There is no limit on how many overlays a chapter can carry, or on placing more than one on the same page or the same image — a signature and a title graphic can sit on the same image at once, each independently positioned.
Every placed overlay appears in the list below the button with a ✎ and a ✕. ✕ removes it. ✎ reopens the same dialog pre-filled with that overlay's current source, anchor, position, width, feather and fade, retitled Edit Overlay — change what you like and Save Changes updates it in place, rather than deleting and starting over. Both adding and editing an overlay are covered by Undo.
Book Details at the top of the sidebar holds your title and author. These are not decoration: the browser uses them to name the file it saves when you export a PDF, and it writes the same text into the PDF's own Title field, which is what a reader's library, Finder or Spotlight shows. They are also written into the core properties of a Word export. Leave them blank and exports fall back to being called "TypeDoctor Print". Both are saved with the project and are covered by Undo.
These fields do not affect what retailers list. KDP, IngramSpark and Draft2Digital take the title and author from their own submission forms and ignore what is inside the interior file. Where this matters is loose copies: review copies you email, a file a reader downloads from your site, anything sitting in a folder or on an e-reader.
All three exports come from the same layout engine as the preview, so page breaks match exactly.
👁 Preview PDF builds the print PDF and shows it in a viewer without saving, for a final visual check. Export Print PDF saves the print-ready PDF at your trim size. Export Word (.docx) writes a real Word document that preserves TypeDoctor's exact computed pagination, with collages composited at print resolution and captions exported as true text paragraphs.
TypeDoctor auto-saves to this browser as you work, but browser storage belongs to one browser on one machine. The .tdoc file is your project's portable, permanent form: it contains every chapter, every image, every setting.
💾 Save .tdoc downloads the file. 📂 Load .tdoc (or the welcome screen's load button) opens it anywhere, any computer, any browser. This is the only way to move a project between devices.
🎬 Try Demo loads three sample chapters that show off widow/orphan correction, images, and layout. Your real project is backed up first and restored the moment you click Exit Demo in the green banner. Nothing you do in the demo touches your manuscript.
TypeDoctor's design rule is that every action has a way back. Settings (trim, typography, widow rules, borders, captions, widths) are live controls; change them back and the layout re-solves identically.
The History panel in the sidebar has ↶ Undo and ↷ Redo, and the same actions are on Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y. Hovering either button tells you which action it will reverse. The history holds the last fifty changes and covers paragraph text edits, em dash replacement (chapter and manuscript), Restore Original Text, adding and deleting chapters, inserting, editing and deleting images, removing all images, adding, editing and removing overlays, resizing and aligning images, verso plates and every verso setting, and signature and title graphic upload and recolour.
Continuous controls collapse sensibly: one drag of a width slider is a single undo step, not one per pixel, and one visit to a paragraph in edit mode is a single step, not one per keystroke. While you are typing inside a text box, Ctrl+Z does ordinary text undo inside that box rather than pulling the whole document back a step, and the shortcut stays inactive while a dialog is open. Loading a project, and entering or leaving demo mode, starts a fresh history.
↺ Restore Original Text still reverts a whole chapter to the text as originally imported, which is useful when a chapter has drifted far from the source. The background removal tool carries its own separate undo and redo. Destructive actions (Remove All Images, exiting demo with changes) always ask before acting.
That machine is missing a font and substituting. Run 🔤 Check Manuscript Fonts there and load the real font file.
That is correct behavior: trim size, font, size, spacing, indent, and widow rules all reflow the book. The preview is always the truth; exports will match it.
The source image has too few pixels for the width you chose. Reduce its width with the slider, or use Set max width for this to cap it at print-safe size, or supply a higher-resolution image.
Load your most recent .tdoc file. If you have none, browser storage cannot be recovered; from now on, save a .tdoc every session.
Save a .tdoc immediately (your data is safe in it even if the display misbehaves), then reload the page and Continue Your Project.
Auto Remove samples the image edges and clears everything matching them. Click anywhere on the image to magic-wand that area away. Checkered squares are transparent.
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