Draft in the center. Think in the margins
Marginalia is a writing app for long-form writers. Every note stays attached to the line that sparked it, until the draft is ready to leave the page.
The lighthouse keeper kept two logs. One for the weather bureau, exact and dutiful. One for himself, in the margin of the first, where the real weather lived.
On the twelfth of October the wind turned early. He wrote: swallows gone three days before the light changed. Then, smaller, under it: I wonder if they know before we do.
That is the thing about a margin. It is where the thinking happens that does not belong to the record but could not have happened without it.
He kept both logs for forty years. The bureau never asked about the second one. The second one is why anyone reads either now.
Notes are not a sidebar
Most writing apps push your thinking into a panel that forgets where it came from. Marginalia keeps each note on the line that sparked it, so the draft and the thinking stay on the same page, in the same order, until you decide otherwise.
Notes attach to lines
Drop a note on any sentence. It follows that sentence when the draft moves.
One page, two layers
The draft stays clean prose. The thinking stays in the margin, on screen when you want it and gone when you export.
Export what you mean
Send a clean manuscript to your editor, or the whole page with its margins as a PDF for the writing group.
From blank page to clean manuscript
Write in the center
The page opens as a page. No panels to close, no toolbar in the way of the first sentence.
Think in the margin
Select any sentence and leave a note. It stays attached while the draft moves around it.
Send out the clean page
Export the manuscript on its own, or the whole page with its thinking intact.
The first tool that treats a note as part of the sentence instead of a chore beside it. My dissertation margins finally make sense.
Elena Marchetti
Doctoral researcher, urban history
Pricing
Start free. Upgrade when the margins fill up.
Yearly billing saves two months.
Draft
For getting the next draft down.
$0/ month
- 3 drafts at a time
- Margin notes
- Export to plain text
- Browser and iPad
Writer
Most chosenFor long-form work in progress.
$8/ month
- Unlimited drafts
- Margin note history
- Export to PDF, Markdown, .docx
- Version snapshots
- Browser and iPad
Studio
For writing groups and small teams.
$16/ month
- Everything in Writer
- Shared margins
- Group review threads
- Priority support
What writers ask before they switch
Does it work offline?
The editor writes to your device first, so a lost connection never costs you the paragraph you are in. Everything syncs when you are back.
Can I import what I have already written?
Drop in a .docx, .md or .txt file and the draft keeps its structure. Notes from other tools come in as plain margin notes you can reattach.
What happens when I export?
You choose: the clean page, or the page with its margins. PDF, Markdown, .docx or plain text, with no watermark and no lock-in.
Is my writing used to train AI?
No. Your drafts belong to you. We do not train on them and we do not read them.
Can my writing group work in the same margins?
On the Studio plan, yes. Each member gets their own layer of notes, and you can export the page with or without them.
What happens if I stop paying?
Your drafts stay yours. The account drops to the Draft plan and everything remains readable and exportable.
Keep the thinking with the sentence
Start a draft and leave the first margin note open. Works in the browser and on iPad. Export to PDF or plain text whenever the page has to leave the room.
Start writing