Line edits and your style sheet

Updated September 29, 2026

A line edit is a close pass over the prose of one chapter. It catches the things a copyeditor would: typos, punctuation, grammar. It also catches the things a line editor would: a word that doesn’t quite mean what you need, filtering (I saw, she noticed), repetition, sentences that run long or don’t parse, and small continuity slips inside the chapter.

It gives you notes. It doesn’t rewrite. Nothing in your chapter changes until you say so.

Starting a line edit

There are four ways in. They all run the same pass.

• Apparition. Open a chapter, and use Line edit in the chapter panel on the right.
• Wisp. The Line editing page lists your chapters, with a line edit button on each.
• Beside the chat. With a chapter or your outline open beside the conversation in Phantom Memory, click Line edit in its header.
• In the chat. Just ask: line edit chapter 3. The chat opens the chapter beside the conversation and starts the pass. Whatever you’ve agreed in the conversation goes into its brief.

The first three open a small dialog with two tabs, Line edit and Style sheet. The rest of this tutorial is about those two tabs.

You can line edit your outline too, from the button over it.

The Line edit tab

Model

Which model reads your chapter. The default is a good place to start. The model’s name stays on the notes it writes, because any wording you accept came from that model.

The Focus field

Focus is optional. Leave it empty and you get the full pass. Fill it in to point the pass at what you care about this time, or to tell it what to leave alone.

Things that work well:

The dialogue in the second half.

I overuse “just” and “really”. Catch those.

Watch the tense. This chapter is in present tense and I slip.

Ignore Ma’s speech. The dropped g’s and double negatives are on purpose.

The fight scene reads slow. Look for sentences that could be shorter.

What it’s good for: steering what the pass looks at, and what it lets be. What it can’t do: change what a note is. The line edit still names a problem and offers wording for that passage. It doesn’t rewrite a scene, even if you ask. If you want a scene redone, ask for it in the chat instead.

Focus is for this pass. It stays filled in the next time you open the dialog, so you can run it again or clear it. If something should apply to every pass on this book, put it in the style sheet instead (see below).

Press Run, or Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on a Mac). You can close the dialog and keep working while it reads.

Reading the notes

The notes show up under the chapter, wherever that chapter is open.

Each note quotes a passage, says what’s wrong with it, and usually offers other wording. Click the quote to jump to that spot in the chapter.

• Apply puts the suggested wording into your chapter.
• ✕ (Dismiss) leaves your words as they were.
• Apply all takes every suggestion that’s still open.
• Done closes the notes. When you’ve dealt with every note, they close on their own.

Some notes have no Apply. Either they’re an observation without a fix, or you’ve changed that passage since the pass read it, so there’s nothing left to replace.

If you apply something and change your mind, Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) undoes it.

The line edit leaves deliberate voice alone. It judges by what the point-of-view character can know, and it works in the language your book is written in. French dialogue dashes and « » aren’t errors in French.

The style sheet

The Style sheet tab is the list of rules every pass on this book follows: how names are spelled, British or American spelling, how you punctuate dialogue, words you use on purpose. A copyeditor keeps one for every book they work on. A pass treats it as more important than its own defaults, so anything on the sheet won’t be “corrected”.

How it fills itself in

The sheet learns from proofreads, the spell-check button on the Apparition toolbar. When you close a proofread’s notes, the editor looks at what you applied and what you dismissed, and updates the sheet.

• What you dismiss teaches it the most. If you refuse colour → color twice, it writes down British spellings throughout. It records the rule, not each word.
• What you apply teaches it a little, and only when a pattern repeats.
• One-offs don’t count. A single dismissed note isn’t a house rule.

A line edit reads the sheet but doesn’t update it. When you dismiss a craft note, you disagree with one sentence. That isn’t a rule about your book.

Writing your own rules

Click Write one (or Edit, once there’s something there) and type. The sheet has five sections: Names & proper nouns, Spelling & dialect, Punctuation & formatting, Voice & usage, and Standing instructions. You don’t have to use them. A line anywhere works.

Keeping the AI from overwriting you

The editor rewrites the whole sheet each time it learns something. It merges new rules in, reorders things and drops what it thinks is out of date. So a line you type normally can be reworded or removed later.

To lock a line, start it with an asterisk (*):

## Names & proper nouns
* Aurélie, always with the accent
* the Hollow (capital H) is the place; "hollow" is just a hollow

## Spelling & dialect
- British spellings throughout

## Standing instructions
* Ma's dialogue is dialect on purpose. Never correct it.
* Em dashes with no spaces around them.

The lines with * are yours. The editor copies them word for word, every time. It won’t reword, move, merge or delete them, even if you seem to contradict them later by what you apply. If a lock is ever lost, Ghostkey puts it back under Standing instructions.

The lines with - are ones it learned. Those it keeps adjusting as it learns more.

So:

• Something you feel strongly about? Give it a *.
• Want to correct a learned rule? Edit it and add a *. Now it’s yours.
• Want a learned rule gone? Delete the line. If your choices keep pointing the same way, it may come back. Write the opposite with a * to settle it.
• Want to change one of your own rules? Edit it yourself. The editor never will.

Clear wipes the whole sheet, including your * lines, and the editor starts learning from scratch. It asks you first.

Keep the sheet short. It rides along with every pass, and the editor tries to keep it under about 40 lines. A long list of rules gets followed less closely than a short one.

Focus or style sheet?

If you find yourself typing the same thing into Focus every time, it belongs on the sheet.

The short version: run a line edit, say in Focus what to look at, and lock anything the editor must never change with a * at the start of the line on your style sheet.