Grammar and style checks that never leave your machine

Writer Studio's proofreading is a genuine offline grammar checker for writers — not an AI wrapper, not a stub. It runs locally, checking spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, and typography as you write, and it works exactly the same whether AI is on or off. Russian is the quality bar the checker is held to; English runs the same categories as best-effort.

What does the checker actually catch?

Five categories run under the hood: spelling (misspelled words), grammar (agreement, government, word order), punctuation (commas, dashes, quotation marks), style (clichés, tautology, overcomplicated phrasing), and a dedicated typography category — correct quotes, dashes, and non-breaking spaces, which matters if you write in Russian. Problem spots get a colored underline, one color per category; click one to open a suggestion card with ranked fixes, or dismiss it and keep writing. Nothing changes without your say-so — picking a suggestion is a normal edit, undoable like any keystroke. Three presets control how much runs at once: Conservative (spelling and typography only, the default for new projects), Standard, and Strict, which turns on every category and is marked experimental. The whole loop also works without touching the mouse — jump to the next or previous issue, accept the top suggestion, or close the card, all from the keyboard. You can run a check across a whole chapter or the full manuscript before handing off a draft — see the full rule list and presets for details on each category.

Does it work with AI turned off?

Yes. This is deterministic, rule-based checking, not an AI feature — there's no "AI check" button, and it works fully offline: every pass runs on your machine, and your text never leaves the device. The underlines appear right inside the same distraction-free editor you already write in, not a separate tool you have to switch to. If you do turn on the AI assistant, it can read the same diagnostics and propose an edit through chat, but the underlying checks stay identical either way. If offline-first tooling matters to you beyond proofreading, our guide to offline writing software covers what else in Writer Studio works without a connection.

Will it flag my characters' invented names?

No, once you teach it. The personal dictionary has two scopes: project (travels with the project folder, survives a database rebuild — this is where the suggestion card's "Add to dictionary" action puts a word) and shared (available across every project on the device, built deliberately by promoting a project word). If you keep a Book Wiki, confirmed character and location names — with their inflected forms — are recognized automatically in every Russian case, without you touching the dictionary at all. Rename a character and the recognition just keeps working.

Does proofreading catch continuity or plot mistakes?

No. Proofreading checks your language — spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, and typography — not your story's facts. It won't tell you a character's eye color changed between chapter three and chapter twelve, or that a timeline doesn't add up; that's a different kind of problem, and Writer Studio doesn't run an automated check for it today. What the checker does, it does for real: every flag comes from a genuine rule-based engine, not a placeholder, running the same whether you're writing in Russian or English. For continuity, the tool is still your own re-read — proofreading just makes sure the language on the page is clean by the time you get there, and the same clean pass carries through when you export the finished file.

Proofreading is on by default for every project — download Writer Studio for free and see your first flags on the next scene you save.