Support
Email support@spaikz.com and we'll get back to you.
What do I write with?
Whatever points at the screen: a finger, a mouse, a trackpad or a stylus. If your stylus reports pressure the app uses it, so an Apple Pencil on an iPad gives you real control over the shades — but pressure is not required, and the nib model derives the weight from the direction of your stroke whether or not any pressure arrives. A mouse can write a perfectly good hand here.
Where do I start?
The Copybook, with a lowercase a. Press Show me and watch it written once before you try it — the app is teaching stroke order and direction of travel, and those are invisible in a finished letter. The numbers on the copy tell you which stroke comes first.
Why won't a letter count as mastered?
Because one good attempt is luck. A letter is only counted once you have written it correctly four times along a line, which is how a copybook was actually used and the only way the shape gets into your hand rather than into one lucky stroke.
My letter looks right but scores badly
Three things are measured besides the shape, and the usual culprit is the third.
- Coverage. The score is quality multiplied by coverage, so three beautiful strokes out of six score worse than six honest ones. Finish the letter.
- Slant. Measured against the copy's own tangent at each point, not against a flat 55° — so a letter that leans consistently is being judged on its consistency, not on a protractor reading.
- Where the shade fell. This is the one. The pen is pulled on every shade and never pushed. If your downstrokes are thin and your upstrokes are thick you have drawn the right shape with the wrong pen movement, and the hand will not read as copperplate however neat it is.
The shades are in the wrong places and I am not pressing anything
That is the nib model working correctly. A pointed pen spreads when it is pulled and closes when it is pushed, so weight is derived from the direction you are travelling relative to the slant. Drawing a letter as an outline, or retracing a stroke backwards, will put the swell somewhere a real pen could not have put it. Follow the numbered order.
What does "cross the letter" do?
It turns the sheet ninety degrees and lets you write a second time across the first, which is what people did to save a sheet and the postage on it. It is legal, it is period, and the app will tell you plainly what it cost the person who has to read it. Try it once on a letter to somebody who can read easily, and never on one to somebody who cannot.
I sealed a letter and was marked down for something I didn't write
The judgement is on three things, and only one of them is the words: the form (salutation, close, where things sit on the sheet, how the envelope is directed), the materials (paper, ink, wax), and whether that was the right letter to send at all to that person on that occasion. Scented rose note to a baronet on a matter of business is a correct letter that should never have been sent. Open The Manual of Correspondence for the rule and where it comes from.
Two manuals disagree with your rule
They very likely did. Victorian letter-writing etiquette was never a single codified law — it was a shelf of books by people with opinions. Where the sources genuinely conflict the app marks the rule contested and says so rather than pretending to a confidence nobody had. If you have a period source that contradicts something we state flatly, please send it; that is the most useful mail we get.
Can I change the paper, the pen or the room?
Yes. The Stationer's holds the papers, nibs, inks and sealing waxes, each shown written with rather than described. The Room sets the view from your desk — which changes the light falling on your sheet — and the name you sign your letters with.
Is my work saved?
Yes, in your own browser, on the device you are using. There is no account, so it does not follow you to another machine, and clearing this site's data clears it. See the privacy page.
Is there an app to install?
Not at the moment — it runs in the browser. On iOS and Android you can add it to your home screen from the browser's share menu and it will open full-screen, which on a tablet with a stylus is the best way to use it.
Reporting a bug
Email support@spaikz.com. Open The Stationer's and look at the colophon at the foot of it: it names the exact build you are running, and including that line tells us more than a description ever does.