French Has Its Own Punctuation. Your Writing App Should Know.
If you write in French, you need things an English keyboard won’t give you: guillemets, no-break spaces before punctuation, a dash that opens dialogue. Shiro does them as you type, for France, Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland, with French dictionaries and a thesaurus. Its interface can be in French or in English, whichever language you write in.
What a French Page Asks of You
French punctuation has rules English doesn’t, and they’re exactly the kind a keyboard won’t help with. A question mark takes a space before it, and that space must not break, or the ? ends up alone at the start of the next line. It’s a small thing, and French readers notice it at once. Getting it right by hand means knowing that there are two sorts of no-break space, and keeping the shortcuts for them in your fingers across 80,000 words.
Shiro sets it as you type:
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
"Bonjour" or <<Bonjour>> |
guillemets, with no-break spaces inside |
Vraiment ? or Vraiment? |
a narrow no-break space before ?, likewise ! and ; |
Écoutez : |
a no-break space before the colon, leaving 12:30 and web addresses alone |
| a hyphen and a space, opening a paragraph | the dialogue dash, followed by a no-break space |
l'ami |
a real apostrophe |
If you’d like the detail, our guide to French typography explains these rules, and it’s useful whichever software you write in. Pasted text can get the same treatment, and a Fix typography command repairs what’s already there, in a selection or a scene.
Four Kinds of French
Each project chooses a spelling: fr-FR, fr-CA, fr-BE or fr-CH. The tag goes with your book, including into its files for readers and editors.
Quebec is the one that truly differs. Following the OQLF, a fr-CA project puts no space before ;, ! or ?, while keeping the no-break space before a colon and inside guillemets. It also accepts Quebec words the French dictionary leaves out, such as bibitte, cenne and bécosse, along with their forms, which a project set to fr-FR will go on underlining.
Belgium and Switzerland follow France’s spacing and share its dictionary, so for now the difference there is the language tag. We’d rather say so than imply a list of Belgian words that doesn’t exist.
Dictionaries, Grammar and Synonyms
Spellchecking uses Grammalecte’s French dictionary, downloaded once on your click, after which it works offline. The thesaurus combines meanings, definitions and opposites from the Wiktionnaire with synonyms from Dicollecte. The bundled Grammar and style plugin underlines grammar, typography and style in French and English, offline and with no AI, and every rule explains itself and can be turned off.
Words that are yours on purpose go on a style sheet, and the spellchecker reads it.
The Rest of the Book
Fifteen project templates exist in French. The word count can show characters, with or without spaces, which matters because French publishers often count in signes. PDF export hyphenates by your book’s language, and generated pages such as Table des matières come out in French. Write has the full tour.
How to Check Any Writing App
We haven’t tested every rival on this, so we won’t make claims about them. You don’t need to take our word either. In any app you’re considering, including this one, type a line of dialogue with guillemets, a question mark and a colon, then narrow the window until the line wraps. Any orphaned punctuation will show itself in about a minute. Le Romancier, for one, presents itself as designed for French, and is worth trying while you’re at it.
The Questions People Ask
Can I write a French book with an English interface?
Yes. The interface language is a setting of the app, and each project keeps its own language and spelling. An English interface and a French novel are a normal combination.
How is fr-CA different from fr-FR in Shiro?
Quebec French drops the space before semicolons, exclamation marks and question marks, following the OQLF, and a fr-CA project accepts Quebec words the French dictionary leaves out. France, Belgium and Switzerland share the same spacing and dictionary.
Can Shiro fix French typography in a text I’ve already written?
Yes. Fix typography works on a selection or a scene, and can be undone in one step. Pasted text can also get the same treatment as typed text.
Does the AI work in French?
Yes, if you use it. Shiro’s prompts exist in both languages, and dictation works in English and French. Translation between French and eleven other languages is available too.