Professional auditing that protects your voice — not destroys it

Your prose, perfected.
Your voice, intact.

The only auditing tool that learns how you write before touching a word. Full manuscript auditing for indie fiction authors — in minutes, not months.

Prose Audit works completely on its own. No other tool or subscription required.

Try free — first 1,000 words

✓Your manuscript is never used to train AI✓Full manuscript results in under an hour✓Voice locked — guaranteed

The only objection that matters

"Won't AI auditing destroy my voice?"

Every other auditing tool ignores this question. Prose Audit is built entirely around it.

"I tried Grammarly. It made my dialogue sound like a corporate email."

Grammarly is built for business writing — short sentences, plain words, nothing unusual. That is exactly wrong for fiction. Prose Audit reads your writing first. It maps your sentence rhythm, vocabulary register, punctuation personality, and deliberate quirks. Every suggestion must sound like you on a better day — or it does not appear.

"ProWritingAid keeps flagging my comma splices. They're intentional."

Prose Audit specifically identifies your intentional quirks — the comma splices, fragments, unconventional dashes — and protects them permanently. It will never correct a deliberate choice. If it cannot tell whether something is intentional, it asks you. It never just changes it.

"Human editors charge $2,500 and take eight weeks. I can't afford that."

Prose Audit delivers everything a professional copy and line editor provides — editorial letter, tracked manuscript with real Word Track Changes, auto-generated style sheet, prose report — for $39, in under an hour. Plus things no human editor can offer, like Voice DNA that travels with you across every book you write.

"I'm not sure my manuscript is ready. What if I publish too early?"

Prose Audit gives you a Publication Readiness Verdict — clear, honest, and evidence-based across six measurable metrics. Green means ready for a proofreader. Amber means one more revision pass, with exactly what to fix first. Red means here is what is holding it back, in priority order.

Voice preservation in action — the same passage before and after

Original

She didn't answer. Couldn't. The words were there — she'd rehearsed them a hundred times over — but now they sat behind her teeth like stones and wouldn't come.

After Prose Audit

She didn't answer. Couldn't. The words were there — rehearsed a hundred times — but now they sat behind her teeth like stones.

One redundant phrase removed, one filler word cut. Fragment rhythm preserved. Em-dash style preserved. Vocabulary unchanged. This audit sounds like the writer at her best — not like a human editor.

Complete on its own

Prose Audit is a standalone product. No other tool required.

You do not need to use any other tool to get full value from Prose Audit. Upload your manuscript, capture your Voice DNA, and receive a professional audit — start to finish, on its own.

Using Prose Audit alone

Upload your manuscript. Prose Audit captures your Voice DNA, runs a full audit, delivers your five professional deliverables, and gives you a Publication Readiness Verdict. Completely self-contained — no prerequisites, no companion tools required.

Using Prose Audit with Story Audit (optional)

If you also use Story Audit (our developmental analysis tool), your manuscript, genre, character list, and structural findings transfer automatically to Prose Audit. The line audit is calibrated to the pacing issues already identified. Two tools, one editorial pipeline — but either works independently.

How it works

Voice first. Audit second. Results in under an hour.

①

Capture your Voice DNA

Paste 200–600 words of your best writing. In 30 seconds, Prose Audit extracts your Voice DNA: sentence rhythm, vocabulary level, punctuation personality, intentional quirks, signature moves. Stored permanently. Deepens with every session.

②

Upload your full manuscript

DOCX, PDF, TXT, or Markdown — up to 150,000 words. Prose Audit reads the whole book before suggesting a single change. It builds a character index, detects your POV and tense, and maps your chapter structure.

③

Two voice-constrained auditing passes

A copy audit pass and a line audit pass — every suggestion filtered through your Voice DNA before it reaches you. Intentional quirks are automatically STET-protected. Voice-drift alerts flag anything that risks changing your style.

④

Five professional deliverables

Editorial letter, DOCX with real Word Track Changes, auto-generated style sheet, interactive prose report, and Voice DNA card. Plus a Publication Readiness Verdict and a support chatbot that answers questions about your audit instantly — with email follow-up for anything it can't resolve.

What Prose Audit checks

Everything a human editor checks. And some things they can't.

The complete set of checks — far beyond grammar and spelling.

ⓘ

Quick glossary — we do audits, not edits

Words matter — here's exactly what we mean (and what we don't).

Prose audit (what we do): An AI-powered diagnostic pass on your full manuscript. We surface issues, suggest fixes as tracked changes, and protect your Voice DNA — you stay in control of every accept/reject.
Copy edit (human editor): A human editor rewriting at sentence level for grammar, clarity, and consistency. Slow, expensive, and we don't compete with that — Prose Audit makes your manuscript ready for it.
Line edit (human editor): A human editor reshaping prose for rhythm, style, and voice. Highly creative work that belongs to your human editor. Our audit doesn't replace it — it sharpens what you hand over.

Audit glossary

STET (Latin: "let it stand"): A traditional editor's mark meaning "ignore this — leave it alone." Prose Audit's STET system automatically flags your comma splices, fragments, and unconventional punctuation as protected style choices so no auditing pass ever rewrites them.
Voice DNA: A fingerprint of your prose — sentence rhythm, lexical signatures, punctuation habits, intentional quirks. Captured once and used as a hard constraint on every suggestion so your voice is preserved.
Style sheet: A document recording every editorial decision in your manuscript: character-name spellings, punctuation conventions, invented terminology, and STET-protected quirks. Send it to your human proofreader.
Tracked changes (DOCX): A Microsoft Word file with every suggestion as a tracked insertion or deletion plus comment bubbles. You accept or reject each one — nothing is ever auto-applied.
Editorial letter: A 600–900 word narrative letter summarising what your audit found, what was changed, and clear next steps in priority order.
Proofreader brief: A one-page PDF handover for your human proofreader: style sheet summary, intentional quirks, what was changed, and what was flagged but left to human judgement.

Still unsure?

ⓘ

What you get — and what you don't

Prose Audit delivers a report, not a rewritten manuscript. Your file is never altered. You stay in full control of every change.

✓ What you get
✗ What you don't get

✦

Grammar and punctuation (fiction rules)

Chicago Manual of Style fiction standards — dialogue comma placement, em-dash consistency, ellipsis style, Oxford comma, compound adjective hyphenation. Fiction rules, not business writing rules.

✦

Full manuscript consistency

Character name spelling, place names, invented terminology, timeline consistency, character physical descriptions. What readers catch in reviews and authors miss after reading the same manuscript forty times.

✦

POV violations and head-hopping

Head-hopping between characters mid-scene. Knowledge contamination — POV character knowing things they couldn't. Tense drift. The craft errors Grammarly and ProWritingAid completely ignore.

Neither Grammarly nor ProWritingAid checks this

✦

Timeline and chronology errors

"Three weeks ago" in chapter 3, "two months ago" for the same event in chapter 9. Impossible travel overnight. Events out of sequence. The logic errors that generate one-star reviews.

No automated tool has done this before

✦

Show don't tell — voice-calibrated

Emotional telling in high-stakes moments. Over-showing in transitions. Clichéd emotion physicality. Suggested alternatives phrased in your voice register — not generic prose substitutions.

✦

Dialogue craft — six checks

Talking heads with no action beats. Exposition dumping through dialogue. On-the-nose dialogue. Character voice blurring. Said-bookisms. Unnatural speech. The full set a human line editor works through.

✦

Repetition and echo detection

The same word appearing 47 times across your manuscript. Echo phrases across scenes. Identified at full-manuscript scale — not just within the visible passage.

✦

Pacing analysis — chapter by chapter

Sentence length variance against your Voice DNA baseline. Chapters where prose drags or rushes. Calibrated to your genre's pacing norms — thriller pace is not literary fiction pace.

★

Voice DNA — unique to Prose Audit

No other tool does this. Your voice fingerprinted, named, stored, and enforced as a hard constraint on every suggestion. Deepens across every book you write. Travels to your proofreader.

Prose Audit exclusive

★

Intentional quirk protection

Your comma splices, fragments, unconventional punctuation: named, listed, permanently protected. Every auditing pass must leave them intact. The STET system — automated and enforced every time. (STET is the editor's mark for "let it stand" — see the audit glossary above.)

Prose Audit exclusive

★

Support chatbot + email follow-up — post-delivery

Questions after your audit? Ask the support chatbot first — it knows your manuscript, Voice DNA, and audit results, and answers instantly. If it can't resolve your question, email hello@page1publishing.com and we'll respond within two business days.

Included with FULL AUDIT

📚

Series Bible — auto-built (Pro)

Upload Book 1 and Prose Audit builds a living character and world bible. Every subsequent book is checked: description drift, timeline, terminology, location geography.

Pro subscribers

For series authors

Writing a series? Prose Audit grows with you.

Series authors have unique auditing needs. Character descriptions drift between books. Eye colours change. Timelines contradict. Place names shift spelling. The Pro Series Bible tracks all of it automatically.

Available with Pro subscription — $179/year

✦ Upload Book 1 → Series Bible built automatically
✦ Character profiles: physical descriptions, relationships, arcs
✦ Location geography and place name consistency
✦ Full series timeline — dates, durations, event order
✦ Invented terminology and world-building rules
✦ Every new book checked against the full series bible
✦ Voice DNA tracked across books — series voice stays consistent

What you receive

Five professional deliverables. In under an hour.

Everything a professional editor provides — in the formats editors and proofreaders actually use.

Editorial letter

A warm, personal 600–900 word letter about your manuscript. Opens with specific praise. Names your voice precisely. Summarises what was found and changed. Gives clear next steps in priority order.

Tracked manuscript (real Word Track Changes)

Your full manuscript with real Microsoft Word Track Changes — red strikethrough for deletions, green for insertions, comment bubbles for queries. Open in Word and accept or reject each change with one click.

Auto-generated style sheet

Every editorial decision documented: character name spellings, punctuation conventions, capitalisation, invented terminology, and your intentional quirks listed explicitly — "Do not correct these." Send it to your proofreader.

Interactive prose report

Sentence rhythm by chapter. Repetition scan across the full manuscript. Error breakdown by type. Pacing analysis. Voice consistency score. Visual and clickable, linked to the relevant passages in your manuscript.

Goes further than any human editor — fully quantified and visual

Voice DNA card

Your voice fingerprinted, named, and documented. Stored permanently in your account. Downloadable as PDF to share with human editors and proofreaders so they know exactly what to protect.

The one deliverable no human editor has ever provided

Proofreader brief + support chatbot

A one-page PDF for your human proofreader: style sheet summary, intentional quirks, what was changed, what was flagged but left to human judgement. Plus a support chatbot that answers questions about your audit instantly — with email follow-up to us within two business days for anything it can't resolve.

Included with FULL AUDIT and Pro

Side by side

Prose Audit vs. a professional human copy/line editor

An honest comparison — what each provides, what each costs, and what each can and cannot do.

Traditional route

Professional human editor

$1,000–$3,200 · 3–8 weeks

✓

Editorial letter7–10 pages, personalised

✓

Tracked manuscript (Word)Track Changes, comment bubbles, STET marks

✓

Style sheetCreated manually, 3–5 pages

✓

POV and head-hopping checksExperienced fiction editor

✓

Dialogue craftFull checks, human reader

✓

Show don't tellHuman judgement, context-sensitive

✓

Publication readiness verdict"Ready" or "one more pass"

✓

Email follow-up questionsAt their hourly rate

✗

Voice DNA profileVoice noted in prose — not stored or enforced

✗

Systematic quirk protectionManual STET — can be missed

✗

Timeline error detectionMissed by fatigued editors across 90,000 words

✗

Series BibleMaintained manually at additional cost

Prose Audit FULL AUDIT

Prose Audit

$39 · under an hour

✓

Editorial letter600–900 words, personalised to your manuscript and Voice DNA

✓

Tracked manuscript (Word)Real Track Changes — opens natively in Microsoft Word

✓

Style sheetAuto-generated from full manuscript scan

✓

POV and head-hopping checksSystematic — keyed to your established POV from Voice DNA

✓

Dialogue craftSix structured checks including talking heads and subtext

✓

Show don't tellCalibrated to your voice register and genre

✓

Publication readiness verdictSix measurable metrics, specific cited reasons

✓

Support chatbot + email follow-upInstant answers about your audit; email response within two business days

★

Voice DNA profileNamed, stored permanently, enforced on every suggestion

★

Systematic quirk protectionEvery deliberate choice hard-protected — always

★

Timeline error detectionFull manuscript scan — catches what fatigue misses

★

Series Bible (Pro)Built automatically from Book 1, checks all future books

★ = exclusive to Prose Audit. Prose Audit does not replace developmental editing (Story Audit), sensitivity reading, or final proofreading of typeset pages — we are clear about where human professionals are still essential.

Why trust Prose Audit

Built on how professional editors actually work

We did not invent a new kind of auditing. We studied exactly what professional copy and line editors do — and built a tool that does all of it, voice-constrained.

📋

Built from the Chicago Manual of Style

Prose Audit applies the same standard that professional copy editors at major publishers use — fiction rules, not generic grammar rules. Dialogue punctuation, em-dash conventions, number style, chapter formatting — all calibrated to fiction publishing standards.

The same standard applied by editors at Penguin, HarperCollins, and independent publishing houses worldwide.

🔬

Every check maps to real editorial practice

Every feature in Prose Audit — the style sheet, the editorial letter, the STET system, the Track Changes markup, the proofreader brief — maps to something a professional editor does manually. Nothing was invented.

We documented the workflows of professional editors before writing a single line of code.

🛡️

Your manuscript is your intellectual property

Prose Audit is operated by Paul Brooks, trading as Page1Publishing. Your manuscript is stored securely in your account, never shared, and never used to train AI models. This is a legal commitment in our Terms of Use — not a preference setting.

Full details in our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Contact hello@page1publishing.com with any questions.

✂️

We are honest about what AI cannot do

Prose Audit does not replace developmental editing, sensitivity reading, or final proofreading of typeset pages. We tell you exactly where human professionals are still essential, and we generate a Proofreader Brief to make that handoff seamless.

We recommend a human proofreader as your final step before publication — and we make it easy.

📚

Part of the Page1Publishing editorial suite

Prose Audit is the companion to Story Audit — a developmental analysis tool used by indie authors who want professional-grade structural feedback. Both products are built by the same team with the same philosophy.

Story Audit at getstoryaudit.com — developmental analysis for structure, pacing, and character arcs.

🎯

One free sample — prove it before you pay

We do not ask you to trust us. We ask you to test us. Paste up to 1,000 words of your writing and see your Voice DNA captured and your prose edited in your own voice — before you spend anything.

One free sample per author. No account required. Your sample text is deleted after the session completes.

Pricing

Less than one hour of a copy editor's time. For your whole book.

A professional copy editor charges $40–$65 per hour and takes 3–8 weeks. Prose Audit delivers the equivalent in under an hour.

Copy pass

$19

one manuscript · one-time payment

✓Full manuscript copy audit

✓Voice DNA capture and protection

✓Grammar, punctuation, consistency (fiction rules)

✓Dialogue punctuation checks

✓Intentional quirk protection (systematic)

✓Editorial letter

✓Tracked DOCX with Word Track Changes

✓Auto-generated style sheet

✓Publication Readiness Verdict

✓Proofreader brief PDF

Copy pass — $19

vs. $1,000–$3,200 + 3–8 weeks for a human editor

Prose Audit + Story Audit = the complete editorial pipeline

Prose Audit works completely on its own. If you also want developmental analysis — story structure, pacing, character arcs — Story Audit is the natural companion. Both work independently. Together, they cover everything a professional editor does.

Optional companion

Story Audit

Macro level — does your story work?

Reader Readiness Score

Full developmental analysis

Editorial letter (story structure level)

Scene and thread tracker

Characters and revision roadmap

Series continuity (Deep Audit)

$19–$39 one-time · getstoryaudit.com

This product

Prose Audit

Micro level — does every sentence sing?

Voice DNA capture and protection

Copy audit + line audit pass

Editorial letter, tracked DOCX, style sheet

POV, timeline, dialogue, show-don't-tell checks

Publication Readiness Verdict

Support chatbot — instant answers (email follow-up within two business days)

$19–$39 one-time · proseaudit.com

$78 total

Complete editorial coverage — developmental analysis + a full audit for one manuscript

A human editor charges $1,000–$5,000 for the equivalent. Takes 8–16 weeks. Story Audit + Prose Audit takes an afternoon — and either works independently.

Questions

What authors ask before they start

Will Prose Audit destroy my voice?

This is the question the whole product was built to answer. Prose Audit reads your writing first, captures your Voice DNA, and uses it as a hard constraint on every suggestion. Your intentional quirks are named and protected permanently. Try the free 1,000-word sample first — see for yourself before spending anything.

Will you rewrite my manuscript and send back an edited version?

No — and this is important. Prose Audit is an audit, not an edit. We never alter your manuscript file. What you receive is a detailed report: every flagged passage with its exact chapter, paragraph and sentence location, a suggested revision, a marked-up diff showing the change, and the rationale behind it. You decide what to accept or reject and apply changes yourself in Word, Scrivener, or whichever tool you write in. We also give you a tracked-changes DOCX listing every suggestion to make that process easier — but it's still a suggestions document, not a finished edit.

Do I need Story Audit to use Prose Audit?

No. Prose Audit is a completely standalone product. You can upload your manuscript, capture your Voice DNA, and receive a full professional audit without any other tool. Story Audit is an optional companion for authors who also want developmental analysis — but it is not required.

Is my manuscript safe? Will it be used to train AI?

Your manuscript is never used to train AI models. It is stored securely in your account with full encryption and deleted when you request it. This is a legal commitment in our Terms of Use — not a preference setting.

How is this different from Grammarly or ProWritingAid?

Both tools check language without knowing the writer. Grammarly is built for business writing — it is actively wrong for fiction. ProWritingAid reveals patterns but has no concept of your specific voice. Neither checks POV violations, timeline errors, dialogue craft, or show-don't-tell in a fiction context. Prose Audit does all of this, constrained to your specific voice.

What is the free sample? What do I get?

Paste up to 1,000 words of your writing — no account required, no payment. Prose Audit captures your Voice DNA, runs a full audit on the sample, and shows you the results: Voice DNA card, all suggestions with reasons, and a sample editorial letter opening. One per author. Your sample text is deleted after the session.

What file formats do you accept, and what do I download?

DOCX, PDF, TXT, Markdown (.md), and RTF — up to 150,000 words. Your downloads are: a printable PDF report grouped by chapter, a Markdown version of the same report, and a tracked-changes DOCX listing every suggestion. Your original manuscript file stays exactly as you uploaded it.

How long does it take?

A 90,000-word novel typically takes 20–40 minutes. You will receive an email notification when your audit is complete — you do not need to stay on the page.

What if Prose Audit misses something?

No auditing pass catches everything — human or automated. Prose Audit significantly reduces issues but is not a guarantee of a perfect manuscript. We recommend a human proofreader as your final step, and we generate a Proofreader Brief to make that handoff seamless. If you believe your audit fell short, contact hello@page1publishing.com within 7 days — we offer a full refund or a free re-run.

Where exactly are flagged passages located in the report?

Every suggestion ships with its precise location — Chapter · Paragraph · Sentence — plus the original text, a marked-up word-level diff showing what changes, and the rationale for why it was flagged. You can open the surrounding paragraph for context on any item, so you never have to hunt through your manuscript to find what we're talking about.

How do I actually apply the suggestions to my manuscript?

Three options, all author-driven. (1) Open the PDF report (grouped by chapter) alongside your manuscript and apply the changes you accept. (2) Use the Markdown export the same way — handy on a second screen. (3) Open the tracked-changes DOCX in Word and accept/reject each suggestion one by one. Whichever route you choose, you stay in control: nothing is ever auto-applied to your file.

Will the report tell me which sentences to revise, not just themes?

Yes. The action summary at the top names the highest-priority issues, but the full report below lists every individual flagged sentence — with its location, a suggested revision, the diff, and why it was flagged. If the line-audit section is ever empty, use the 'Regenerate line-audit' button on the report page; we'd rather rebuild it than ship an incomplete report.

Start today

Your voice is the one thing
an editor should never change.

Try Prose Audit free — paste 1,000 words of your writing and see your Voice DNA captured and your prose edited in your own voice. No account required. No credit card. One free sample per author.

Try free — first 1,000 words View pricing

✓No account required for free sample✓One free sample per author✓7-day refund guarantee on paid edits

Your prose, perfected.Your voice, intact.