Everything on this site that recommends a scan also names what it does not do, and this page collects those statements in one place. The reason is practical rather than modest: a tool you believe covers something it does not is worse than no tool, because you stop looking.
What it does not replace
| Not replaced | Why |
|---|---|
| A proofreader | Ordinary spelling and grammar are outside the scope; the typography check reads marks, not words |
| A copyeditor | House style, usage and clarity require judgement |
| A developmental editor | Structure and character are about meaning |
| A continuity reader | Timelines, knowledge and description need understanding |
| Beta readers | How a book feels to read cannot be measured |
| Your own reading | Nothing substitutes for it |
| A sensitivity reader | An entirely different kind of expertise |
| A spellchecker | Ordinary vocabulary is not reported, beyond a few fixed spelling and house-style pairs |
What it does instead
The Novel Kit reads a manuscript file or an EPUB and returns the proper nouns and unusual terms it contains, each with an exact count and the point where it first appears. It's rule-based, so the same file gives the same report every time. The manuscript is transiently processed for the scan and never stored: no manuscript text, no filename and no extracted term is written to any database, which the project's own tests enforce.
That answers a specific set of questions completely: which names and invented words the book uses, whether any appears in more than one form, how often each occurs, and where each was introduced. Those questions are otherwise answered by searching, which finds only what you thought to look for.
The division to hold in mind
- What a tool can list: vocabulary, counts, positions.
- What a search can find: anything you know to look for.
- What a person must catch: everything about meaning.
The full grouping is in a manuscript quality checklist, and the mechanical detail of why the boundary sits where it does is in what a rule-based checker cannot do.
A practical next step
Write down the three things you most want checked. Any that involve meaning belong to a person, and knowing which they are makes the rest of your budget effective.
Sources checked
- What a scan can and cannot tell you
- What a rule-based checker cannot do
- A manuscript quality checklist
Frequently asked questions
What does a scan not replace?
A proofreader, an editor, a continuity reader, and your own reading. It replaces a specific mechanical task and nothing else.
Why say this so directly?
Because the value of a narrow tool is that its scope can be stated, and a tool whose limits are vague cannot be relied on within them.
What is it good for, then?
Knowing what your manuscript names and how consistently, completely and exactly, which is a real job that is otherwise slow and unreliable.