Frequently asked questions

Yes, but only as a proofreader, never a writer. Its one job is to catch typos: wrong words, missing punctuation, duplicate phrases, broken sentences. When TypoSweep finds an error, it proposes the smallest fix possible, like swapping a wrong word for the right one, and nothing more. It never adds prose of its own or suggests rewriting for style. No change touches your manuscript without your explicit approval in Word's tracked-changes view. It flags; you decide. This is how AI should be used in creative writing (never for the creative part).

Existing tools catch some typos, but many “errors” are actually the author's individual style: passive voice, sentence length, comma placement, word choice. For a careful writer, most of those suggestions are wrong and many are frankly annoying. TypoSweep does the opposite: it focuses narrowly on objective errors like wrong words, dropped punctuation, doubled words, and broken sentences.

No. TypoSweep is a proofreader, not an editor. A developmental editor works on plot and structure, a copyeditor on grammar and consistency, and a proofreader does the final pass that catches the typos that survived everything else. That last job is what TypoSweep does, after your own revisions, beta readers, and editor. A good human editor brings craft and judgment no AI can match. TypoSweep is just the quiet last sweep before you publish.

This is a fair concern, and worth being direct about. The backlash in the writing community is aimed almost entirely at people using AI chatbots to generate prose. TypoSweep is not a chatbot, and it never generates new writing or suggests stylistic changes. It reads the manuscript you wrote, flags possible typos, and proposes the least invasive fix. You stay the author, and every change is yours to accept or reject.

Some people object to any AI involvement in publishing at all, and that is their right. A good human proofreader is worth every penny, and if you can hire one, do. TypoSweep is for the authors and small publishers who can't, giving them a careful read they would otherwise go without.

No. Your manuscript is never used to train any AI model: not by TypoSweep, and not by the Anthropic API that powers it. Anthropic's commercial terms strictly prohibit training on text sent through their API. Anthropic itself deletes the text within 30 days, and never uses it for training. All manuscripts and associated reports are deleted from TypoSweep storage within 30 days, or right away when you use the delete button. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.

TypoSweep uses Anthropic's commercial API. This is a key detail, because using the commercial API is not the same as using Anthropic's Claude directly. Unlike the regular Claude, which trains on your inputs by default unless you opt out, the commercial API does not. This isn't just a feel-good thing because Anthropic wants to be nice. Privacy-sensitive industries with deep pockets, like medicine and law, use Anthropic's commercial API, so training on that data would be a commercial disaster for Anthropic.

TypoSweep was built by Will Pass, a writer who needed it for his own manuscripts. Word and Grammarly kept flagging hundreds of his stylistic choices as errors while missing real typos, and he wasn't willing to hand an unpublished manuscript to an AI chatbot that might train on it. So he built the tool he wanted: one that finds typos with high accuracy, leaves your voice alone, and keeps your manuscript private. He writes his first drafts on a typewriter.

No. Your manuscript is yours, start to finish. Nothing in our terms gives TypoSweep any rights to your work beyond the temporary processing needed to run your job and deliver the results. We don't publish it, share it, sell it, train on it, or even see it. Your manuscript goes straight to the automated proofreader and back to you. When the job is done, you can delete everything from the TypoSweep servers immediately, or it will be automatically deleted after 30 days. See the Terms and Privacy Policy for the formal language.

A Microsoft Word .docx file, up to 50 MB. Older .doc files, PDFs, Google Docs links, and plain text aren't supported. To convert: from a Google Doc, use File → Download; from a .doc or .pdf, use Word's "Save As."

For most manuscripts, 5 to 10 minutes from payment to inbox. Longer books, closer to the 350,000-word cap, can take up to 20. You don't need to keep the browser open: an email arrives the moment your TypoSweep is ready, with links to the tracked-changes Word doc and the typo report.

The automated full TypoSweep caps at 350,000 words to keep turnaround fast for everyone in the queue. That covers virtually every commercially published novel, including most epic fantasy. If your project is longer, email hello@typosweep.com to discuss options.

You can delete your files the moment they're delivered, using the button on your job page. Otherwise everything is automatically deleted after 30 days. The only thing kept long-term is metadata: your email, payment status, word count, and flag counts. The manuscript and any generated files are gone for good.

Anything under about 5,000 words won't show much in the preview, which samples about 5,000 words from across your manuscript. The full TypoSweep still runs on shorter manuscripts, but for a short story or essay, the entry-tier price may not be worth it. Use your judgment, and see the pricing page for the full tier breakdown.

Pretty accurate, and now measured. In a controlled study of ten complete classic novels seeded with 1,200 errors, TypoSweep caught 87% of all of them, and 91% of the context errors a spell-checker can't see, which is the class it's built for. For comparison, published research puts professional human proofreaders around 66% on that same class of error. No proofreader, human or AI, catches every typo, though, and any service claiming 100% is overselling: missing words and plain misspellings are where TypoSweep is weakest, by nature and by design. You can read the full study, including where it falls short, on the accuracy page. If you're disappointed by the output, shoot Will an email. He is known to be generous with refunds, and loves when people share their feedback, good or bad.

Reject it in Word. The report also sorts flags into two tiers (likely and worth a look) so you can focus on the cases where TypoSweep was most confident and skim the rest.

If your preview surfaces an unusually high number of potential issues, TypoSweep will hold off on offering you the full job and suggest running spellcheck or another editing pass first. It does its best work once the obvious problems are already cleared, since it's built as a final pass, not a substitute for that earlier editing. If you've already done both and the recommendation seems off, email hello@typosweep.com.

If a TypoSweep fails to complete due to a technical fault, the full charge is refunded automatically. If you're unhappy with a completed TypoSweep, email hello@typosweep.com within 14 days. See the Terms for the formal policy.

Yes. Each upload is treated as a new submission, so if you accept some suggestions, make further edits, and want a second sweep, just upload the revised file. You pay the tier price again each time, based on whatever bracket the revised manuscript falls into. For most authors, one sweep close to publication is enough; two is rarely necessary.