Markdown in. Magazine-typeset HTML out. Drop caps. Real hyphenation. Sidenotes in the margin. The works.
No account. No download. The engine runs in your browser.
Left: a system font, a column as wide as the window, lines broken wherever the text ran out of room. Right: a drop cap, a column held to a set measure, real hyphenation, every line ending decided before the page loaded. Read the whole essay, set the same way →
Every essay on this site is set by the engine you'd use. Each of these shows one thing the web usually gets wrong.
The full editorial kit on one essay: notes in the margin, a set pull quote, footnotes under a ¶.
Prose wrapping to the true contour of a letterform, then a photograph — the line-breaker and the shape given the same data.
Syllable-aware hyphenation, and the rule that stops a two-letter fragment ending a line.
Every line ending decided before the page loads, with a captioned photograph that blurs up as it arrives.
Where the paragraph break came from, and the second hand that typesetting puts back.
A centred chapter label and title, an initial that starts the body — a book's first page, set for a screen.
An oversized headline, then a conversation with the speakers' names set bold — the interview spread, without the spread.
Substack posts look like Substack posts. Medium articles look like Medium articles. ChatGPT-written ebooks look like ChatGPT-written ebooks. The visual signature of produced quickly, default-styled has become a tell. Readers feel it before they can name it.
Your writing deserves better than that.
Paste a paragraph into the Playground. Pick a font. Watch Pilcrow set it the way print does — drop cap, 65-character lines, real en-gb hyphenation, balanced line endings.
No account. No download. The engine runs in your browser.
Canva gives you a layout — a poster, a deck, a brochure shell. The text on it is whatever font you picked from a dropdown. That's why a Canva carousel looks like a Canva carousel.
Pilcrow doesn't lay out the page; the page is the layout. We set the type the way a printer would: drop cap on the lede, 65-character lines, real hyphenation, sidenotes in the margin. Every blog post, every page of a brochure, every chapter of a book gets the same craft treatment.
You can spot a Canva piece in a feed. The point of Pilcrow is that you can't spot ours — it just reads better.
You want your writing to look like it's from The Atlantic, not from a CMS template. Hosted blog at your own domain. Web editor. Drop caps, sidenotes, real hyphenation. Set like a magazine.
Manuscript ready, but it doesn't look like a real book yet. The Author plan takes your Markdown, Word, or Google Doc and returns a print-ready PDF, an EPUB, and a typeset sample chapter. The pipeline is built and tested; checkout opens with live billing, and the waitlist hears first.
Brochures, thought-leadership PDFs, brand-led blogs. Output that reads like £2,000 of editorial design, not like a Canva template. Custom fonts, custom palette, and multi-author arrive with the Business plan. Coming soon.
In Markdown, in our web editor, or by uploading your Word document. The way you already work — we don't make you learn a new tool.
Our engine runs the same typesetting pipeline as a print compositor: hyphenation dictionary, line-break optimisation, drop-cap measurement, sidenote alignment. Build time, not browser time.
Your blog goes live at your domain. Your book becomes a print-ready PDF and EPUB. Your brochure becomes a download. Set once, ready everywhere.
The Pilcrow Press gallery is a curated directory of blogs, newsletters, and brand publications typeset with Pilcrow. Every entry is hand-picked. Click in to read; trace the typography back to the engine.
The gallery opens in summer 2026 with the closed-beta cohort. Want to be considered? Join the waitlist.
For developers running the engine themselves.
npx create-pilcrow
For the blog or newsletter that should look like yours.
For the manuscript that's finished.
Built and tested: upload, typeset, download the PDF and EPUB. Checkout isn't switched on yet — join the waitlist and we'll write the day it is.
Join the waitlistFor brand publications and thought-leadership content.
Not available yet. Writer ships first; Business follows.
Talk to us|
Free OSS |
Writer £12/mo |
Author £29/book |
Business £49/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pilcrow engine | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-host | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Hosted blog | — | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Custom domain | — | soon | — | soon |
| Web editor | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Book PDF + EPUB | — | — | soon | soon |
| Brand kit (custom fonts) | — | — | — | soon |
| Multi-author (up to 5) | — | — | — | soon |
| White-label footer | — | — | — | soon |
All plans include our six-font shortlist (Fraunces, Newsreader, Source Serif 4, EB Garamond, Inter, Spectral), drop caps, real en-gb hyphenation, sidenotes, footnotes, pull quotes, OG cards, and RSS. The engine doesn't change between tiers — only what surrounds it.
Annual billing saves ~30%. Cancel anytime. We don't lock you in — your content exports as Markdown whenever you want it. Rows marked soon switch on as each plan's checkout goes live; the waitlist hears first.
pilcrow-typeset. The paid
plans are about the SaaS surface (hosted blogs, the web editor,
custom fonts, support) — not about gatekeeping the engine.
npx create-pilcrow my-blog scaffolds a site on
the same engine — free, open source, MIT.
Start with the CLI on GitHub. Open the playground. Paste a paragraph. See your writing set the way it should have been all along.
Or read the engine on GitHub.