Simon, building Betty.

Building Bethaniel has felt a lot like writing a book: the last 20% took 80% of the time.

I thought I was in the final stretch ages ago. Then I spent what feels like forever fixing how the system recognizes scene breaks and paragraph breaks, and tuning performance so Betty feels less like a clever prototype and more like a real tool.

It's been exhausting. A lot of the work has lived in that deeply unglamorous category of problems that only show up once you think the big ideas are finished: edge cases, formatting, timing, and all the tiny places a writing tool can lose the thread if you're not careful.

But that long final stretch has also been useful. It has given me time to think about how many different ways Betty could be used, and whether keeping her inside a standalone program is actually the right long-term shape.

Why not a Word plugin? Or, maybe even better, a LibreOffice plugin. If part of this project is about giving writers better tools without pushing them deeper into locked platforms, then tech independence should probably be part of the design, not just a slogan taped on afterwards.

I don't have the full answer yet. Right now I'm still making Betty better at the boring but essential parts of editing. But I keep circling back to the idea that she may need to live in more than one place.

— Simon

I built Betty because I wanted a serious editing tool that stayed on my own machine.

I write fiction myself, which means I spend a lot of time in drafts that are half inspired and half held together with stubbornness. I wanted help with the copy and line-editing layer of that work, but I didn't want to upload manuscripts, sign up for another subscription, or build my writing process around somebody else's server.

So I made the thing I wanted to use. Betty is a copy and line editor that runs on your computer, keeps your text local, and gives suggestions without trying to take over the page.

The full name is Bethaniel, but Betty is what stuck. She is opinionated in the useful way, patient about messy drafts, and much faster than I am at spotting the kinds of problems that creep in once you've read the same chapter twelve times.

I am making her free for personal use because I don't think good writing tools should be reserved for people with big budgets. If you're an indie author, a hobbyist, or a small team trying to get words into shape, I want this to be within reach.

I'll use this space to write about what I'm building, what is proving harder than expected, and what I'm learning about writing tools while Betty grows up.

If you'd like to hear when there's a new release or a new post here, there's a mailing list on the main page. I won't use it often, and I won't use it for nonsense.

Until then: you can download Betty from the main page. I hope she helps.

— Simon