Ellipsus

Write like a human! Ellipsus is an easy-to-use collaborative writing tool made by writers, for writers.

[ellipsus-writes]

If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

[ellipsus-writes]

What if... writing the “wrong” thing is what leads you back to yourself?

In our newest guest contributor's blog post, Blackbird writes about burnout, creative pressure, first-time fanfic, and the unexpected side quests that can help us rediscover the joy in creating things.

"It's important to find the part of you that's fueled by nothing more than pure self-indulgence, and to give that part of you the space to exist.

Whatever form that takes."

Have a read over on the blog! - the Ellipsus Team xo

[ellipsus-writes]

Pope Leo XIV wrote 42.3K words on human dignity in the age of AI. (But Ellipsus has written over 65K words on the topic since 2023. 💪)

Solidarity is a weird thing… all of a sudden you’re seeing the Pope on your dash and the tea is… piping hot? (To offset the Vatican.va link, here's a tl;dr from The Onion.) ... Look at him go!

(Disagreements with his Holiness aside, it’s great to see a powerful figure power taking the side of the people.) ... EDIT: Wake up babe, a new Inquisition just dropped - apparently, not even the Pope can escape being wrongly accused by AI "verifiers."

[martindykewood]

like i quite literally have never been more passionate about anything than i am about the human race’s invariable desire to tell stories and the fact that we always find a way to do it, through spoken language and written language and body language and visual art and theater and poetry and oral tradition and a million other things. there are so many things we take for granted about the human experience that we never stop to think about but i really want you to take a step back and consider how fucking amazing it is that our need to tell stories transcends all boundaries of time and geography and borders and language. it is one of very few things that is legitimately intrinsic to human nature and i will never stop being completely in awe of humanity for that.

[beaswellgirl]

yep, pretty much

[ellipsus-writes]

Right y’all 😮‍💨—we worked our way though over 5,000 responses for our survey on writing in the age of AI. We crunched the numbers, made some lovely infographics, gathered a ton of phenomenal quotes, data’d the data—and shared the results over on our blog.

Who’s ready for some pie charts?!🧵🧵

First thing’s first… AI generated content is remarkably unpopular.

Almost all of you believe that human provenance is a must. (And we couldn’t agree more.)

This one came as a bit of a shock: nearly half of all respondents felt their work could be mistaken for AI.

And almost all of you (99.5%) think AI content should be clearly labeled.

Thank you to the thousands of writers who took the time to complete the survey. Together, you wrote over 500,000 words—that’s a heck of a mighty tome! You can read the full report over on our blog.

We’ll be breaking down more of our findings throughout this week, as well as sharing more of the fantastic text responses we received! - the Ellipsus Team xo

[writingdose]

writers, you can and should be proud of your fic even if you personally are not satisfied with it. because even if you think it's "not good", you can be proud of the fact that you wrote it and it's something you created. you can be proud of the fact it's not ai.

repeat after me, it's something you put your soul and dedication in — and that's something ai could never achieve.

[ellipsus-writes]

🎉📄 New in Ellipsus… Pages! 📄🎉

See what your work would look like in print with the new, page-based view of your docs!

Pages let you switch from a pageless view to a structured print-style layout for easy navigating, referencing, previewing, and exporting—great for long works, manuscripts, papers, submissions, or anything where pagination matters.

Ready to try it out?

Open the Format panel in the right sidebar

Scroll down to the Layout section.

Select Pages to enable page-based formatting for your document.

From there, you can format your pages settings. (Click Reset to defaults anytime to go back to the pageless scroll.)

With pages, you can:

Set your formatting Set portrait or landscape orientation, margin sizes, units of measurement, etc.

Set page numbers Set page number placement, alignment, and style.

Share & export with pages Page formatting stays the same for your file exports. 

...and more! Learn about all the things you can do with pages over on the Help Center. - the Ellipsus Team xo

[ellipsus-writes]

We want to hear from you! 📣 🗯️

Over the past two years, the mess that is generative AI has barrelled its way through human creative spaces. It’s been… a shit show.

The effects of this hostile takeover are well reported: slop, enshittification, deepfakes, misinformation. AI came straight for creative work first (because it was illegally trained on it 🙃)—and yet, beyond the (very real) concern of industry redundancies, and the (dubious) claims of AI “replacing” human creatives, there’s notably a lack of discussion about how it’s impacted creatives just being creative.

Writing, scrolling, reading online—the basic ways we live our daily creativity are being impacted by This Thing, and it deserves more attention.

We know you have an opinion—and we know it’s good. We’d love if you’d share it with us.

The survey is anonymous and takes about 3 minutes. We’ll compile some of the findings and publish for all to read. (And if you want to be quoted in a future essay or social posts, please feel free to leave your name/pseudonym or social handles in the optional contact form at the end.)

We're committed to supporting human creatives in the age of AI—and we’re working to build a human-led, human-affirming network to make sure that human creativity is protected. Because without art, we’d be really screwed.

So please, tell us how we can help! Take the survey here.

- the Ellipsus Team xo

[ellipsus-writes]

👀📄

Coming (very!) soon...

[ellipsus-writes]

Call for blog submissions!

We’re opening up the Ellipsus blog and newsletter to paid contributors. If you've got ⚡️thoughts⚡️ to share about how it feels to write like a human in the age of AI - on the enshittification of the creative internet, the craft of writing, censorship, fandom, or any other related topics - we’d love to hear from you! In addition to remuneration, your work will be sent out to our 400k+ newsletter readers and circulated on all socials.

You can read more about pitching topics and our rates here. Please follow the instructions on this document to pitch us/contact the team. Happy writing! - the Ellipsus Team xo

[ellipsus-writes]

MAGA-controlled social media is doing the work of book bans by suppressing support for marginalized authors.

If you haven’t seen much from us on TikTok this week, that’s why. Our recent post celebrating and supporting Trans Day of Visibility was shadowbanned.

It’s nothing new: TikTok has long flagged words like lesbian, gay, transgender—alongside posts about genocide, social justice, and political resistance—burying them under the opacity of “safety guidelines.”

What’s changed is the scale and precision—now with TikTok under the control of Larry Ellison (Trump bff and one of the architects of the surveillance ecosystem), today’s moderation systems are AI-automated with a new agenda.

We’ve already seen posts muted or made unsearchable for using innocuous language—terms like anti-capitalist, fascism (anything the administration aims to deem “domestic terrorism”), even the word "censorship" itself.

We’re not deleting anything, and we’re not softening our language to appease the algorithm. And we’re especially not walking back our support—thank you to everyone who helped us raise funds last week for Trans Lifeline and the ACLU.

A huge part of our community gathers on platforms like TikTok and X. We share work and updates there; we support creators there—many of them queer writers who are still making content and will not disappear.

We just wanted to mention how fucked it is that one of the largest creative platforms is silencing queer language and the politics of liberation: this is blatant censorship being passed off as "content moderation."

Visibility is resistance—and writing, naming things as they are, is the first defence. Trans rights are not up for debate, and the words to defend those rights are not going anywhere. - the Ellipsus Team xo

[areyoudoingthis]

babe wake up ao3 came up with the only funny april fools joke in the history of the world

[ellipsus-writes]

Love fantasy? Dabble in world building? Have you ever wondered what the hell an immersion anchor is?! Our new contributor blog post is just the read for you!

“Imagine your protagonist […] stops for the night in an idyllic town. As your protagonist explores, they learn of terrorizing bandits, and other dark secrets lurking in the shadows. In this way, extra ‘dimensions’ or perspectives multiply as the story unfolds. In your world, there should be more than meets the eye.”

Check out Heather’s 6+ tips to level up your world building over on the blog. We’re worldmaxxing y’all! 🔮

[ellipsus-writes]

A couple of treats to get you over hump-day... emoji picker and Reader spoilers now live!

You can now insert emojis in both editor comments and Reader comments using the emoji picker icon. (Or in a doc, just type a colon and the first three letters of your :favorite emoji: and see it materialize.)

Don’t ruin the fun... wrap it in a spoiler! Your readers can now hide spoilers in Reader comments. Just highlight the text and select ‘Spoiler’ from the formatting bar.

And if you want to check out all the things we shipped in the past few months, head over to the blog! Happy WIP Wednesday, all!

- the Ellipsus Team xo

[ellipsus-writes]

Happy Trans Day of Visibility, Ellipsus fam! 🏳️‍⚧️

Right now, this day is hugely significant for trans authors in ways that are very real, and (unfortunately) very immediate. Trans people are facing coordinated attacks from fascist orgs and governments; censorship is spreading, and creative voices are being targeted. But despite it all, trans joy and art persists; in fact, it’s only growing louder.

Stories tell truths. Fascism seeks to disconnect people from knowledge, empathy, history, and finally, each other. Through dark times, writers armed with nothing but words have exposed injustice and changed culture by keeping their communities connected. By writing, they kept empathy alive.

Millions of trans, non-binary, and genderqueer people are finding freedom in creative expression—vitally, now more than ever. Trans stories shape the brilliant and beautiful world that is queer art. We need to keep that light visible, and help these stories continue.

(You can find some great lists of trans authors and their work here, and here, and here…)

These badges are free to download and share. Stick em’ where it matters.

We also have a sticker sheet for sale in our merch store. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Trans Lifeline and the ACLU. We’ve been longtime supporters of these orgs fighting against trans discrimination, legislation and queer book bans. Please consider donating if you can! xoxo

Trans pride sticker sheet

Show your support for trans writing and creativity with this sticker sheet! All profits for these stickers go to the ACLU, to combat anti-tr

[ellipsus-writes]

Missing those "ARRRGHHHH I LOVE THIS SM. I NEED MORE 😱" comments when sharing your Ellipsus writing?

Ohhh boy, do we have news for you! Introducing...

Reader Comments!

Let your readers show their love—in words, GIFS, or any rambling combination. Like, comment, reply… get that sweet, sweet dopamine hit, and let the conversation roll.

Here’s how it works:

Create a Reader link via Share and export

Select Reader link

Choose Can interact, then check add comment.

Signed-in users will then be able to comment on your shared Reader link.

As the author, you're in control of your comments section. You can:

Delete comments on your work.

Turn comments on or off at any time.

Shape the tone and boundaries of your own Reader space.

And if you didn’t already know, Reader links also let readers:

Leave props (when enabled)! 👏

Customize their reading experience with themes (unless you choose one for them)

Use accessible fonts

Happy commenting!! - the Ellipsus Team xo