Jamie’s Blue Pencil
Every writing tool I’ve tried lately wants to do the same thing: take what I wrote and hand me back something it would have written instead. Smoother, maybe. Blander, definitely. And after a few rounds of that, the writing stops sounding like a person and starts sounding like everything else on the internet.
I wanted the opposite of that. Not a machine that rewrites me, a careful editor that helps me sound more like myself, catches the dumb mistakes, and then gets out of the way. So I built one. It’s called Jamie’s Blue Pencil, and it’s here:
It learns your voice: then helps you keep it
This is the part I’m proudest of. Paste in a few things you’ve already written (old posts, emails, whatever sounds like you) and the Blue Pencil builds a quiet little fingerprint of your voice: your sentence lengths, your favorite words, your rhythm. Then, as you write something new, it gives you a voice-match score and gently highlights the spots where the draft drifts away from how you actually talk. It’s the difference between “fix this” and “hey, this sentence doesn’t sound like you. Did you mean it to?”
The usual red-pen passes, too
Underneath the voice stuff, it does the work a good editor does:
- Mechanics & spelling: the typos, the doubled words, the missing spaces.
- Grammar: with an optional deeper grammar engine you can switch on when you want a closer read.
- Style: passive voice, throat-clearing, clichés, hedges, wordy phrases, words you’ve repeated three times in a paragraph, sentences that all thud along at the same length.
- Consistency: mixing US and UK spelling, or hyphenating “e-mail” in one line and “email” in the next.
- Plain, inclusive language: optional, if you want that pass.
Every finding has a one-click fix, or you can wave it off. There’s even a “fix all” for the safe stuff.
Two moods: Write, and Edit
Nothing kills a first draft faster than a tool nagging you mid-sentence. So there are two modes. In Write mode the linter reads along quietly and keeps its opinions to itself. When you’re ready for the red pen, flip to Edit mode and every finding lights up. Draft in peace; edit when you mean to.
Little touches that respect the work
- A drafts library so you can keep several pieces going at once.
- Snapshots: freeze a version, then see a word-by-word diff of what changed.
- Read aloud, because your ear catches what your eye skips.
- A paragraph heatmap and a little sentence-rhythm graph, so you can see the shape of the whole piece at a glance.
- Your own rules: teach it a pet peeve, or let it learn a rule from an edit you just made.
- Export to text, Markdown, Word, or PDF, or send a draft straight to WordPress.
No AI, and your words stay put
There’s no model in here. Nothing you write gets shipped off to a server to be “analyzed.” The whole thing runs in your browser, on your machine, full stop. It’s local by default: the only time your words leave the page is if you choose to sign in and sync your drafts and saved voices across your own devices.
That’s a deliberate trade. Because there’s no AI, the Blue Pencil won’t understand what you mean: it reads patterns, not meaning. It’s a sharp second pair of eyes, not a replacement for one. But it’s honest, it’s fast, it’s private, and it will never quietly sand your voice down into someone else’s.
If you write anything (posts, newsletters, the dreaded work email), give it a try. It’s free:
Jamie
