Veritext — User Guide

User guide

Check it. Strengthen it. Keep it yours.

Veritext is an originality checker and writing studio. It searches your most distinctive sentences on the live web and scores them against the real sources it finds, then helps you cite what needs citing, strengthen your argument and prose, and polish the writing — while the substance of the work stays yours.

01Getting started

Two ways in: paste text, or import a file.

Add your document. Paste directly into the editor, or switch to Import file and drop in a .docx, .pdf, .txt, .md, .html or .rtf. Veritext extracts the text; live word and character counts appear under the editor.
Pick an action. Check originality for the overlap report, Refine to polish the prose, or Strengthen for an editorial review.
Finish and export. When the document is where you want it, use Finalize & download to save it — including patching your changes back into the original Word file with its layout intact.

The status chip

The header shows a live service indicator. Proxy live means search and writing services are reachable; Offline means they aren't — check your connection and reload before running a check.

Your draft is saved automatically

Everything in the editor is auto-saved on this device as you work — typing, imports, applied refinements and resolved flags all persist. If the app closes or reloads, your text comes back with a “Draft restored” notice. Clear empties both the editor and the saved draft.

Tip: check clean text, not front matter. Cover pages, declarations and tables of contents aren't prose. They often match generic university wording on the web and add noise to the report. For the truest picture, delete them from the editor before checking, and keep them in your original file for the final patch.

02Check originality

Live-web evidence, sentence by sentence — not an AI guess.

Veritext selects your most distinctive sentences (12 by default; adjustable in Settings), searches each one on the live web as it runs, and measures how closely each sentence tracks the actual source text it finds. Every flag links to a real URL you can open and judge for yourself.

Reading the score

% original

Higher is better. The gauge is word-weighted across the sampled sentences: if the flagged sentences hold 24% of the sampled words, the gauge shows 76. The line beneath it states both directions explicitly — “24% of sampled words matched sources · 76% clean.” A fully clean sample reads 100.

Quoted material that already names its source is excluded from the score — a cited quote isn’t plagiarism, so attributing quotes lifts the score honestly.

What each flag means

Label	Meaning	What to do
Close match	The sentence tracks a found source closely in wording and order.	Cite the source, then re-express the point in your own words.
Possible paraphrase	Looser overlap — shared vocabulary and partial word order.	Check the source link; cite it if the idea is borrowed, and reword where it still tracks.
Quote · cite it	A direct quote with no attribution.	Add the citation. Once attributed, it stops counting against the score.
Quoted & attributed	A quote that already names its source.	Nothing — it’s excluded from the score.
No web match	Nothing on the live web tracked this sentence closely.	No overlap action needed. (Borrowed ideas still deserve citations even in your own words.)

Each flag card shows the matched words highlighted, the similarity percentage for that one sentence, the source link, and a Find in my document → button that highlights the exact spot in your editor. The tappable badges under the gauge jump to the sentences behind each count, and All sentences checked lists every sampled sentence with its verdict.

What the score is — and isn’t. It’s measured overlap with sources found on the live web, across a sample of your most distinctive sentences. It is strong evidence, not a certificate: institutional checkers also search paywalled journals and past student submissions that a web search can’t see. Read a high score as “no overlap found on this sample,” not as a guarantee.

03Resolve flags

One tap triages every open flag the honest way: citation first.

When a report has open flags, a Resolve flags — cite the sources button appears. Tapping it:

Drafts a citation for every flag with a found source — built from the source page’s title and link, placed at the end of the flagged sentence, e.g. (Feasibility Study Texas, n.d.).
Builds or extends a References section at the bottom of your document, one entry per source, with duplicates skipped.
Clears unattributed quotes properly — once cited, they reclassify as attributed on your next check and stop counting against the score.
Queues what still needs your voice. Close matches keep their new citation but appear under Re-express in your own words, each with a short Direction note: the idea worth keeping and an angle for rebuilding the point from your own analysis. Veritext deliberately does not reword these for you — crediting a source is automatic; the writing is yours.

Finish with Re-check originality for an updated, honest score.

Before you submit. Drafted citations use the page title and “n.d.” as placeholders. Replace them with the full author, year and publication details in your reference style — the report reminds you of this too.

04Refine — the Writing studio

Focused polishing that reads like a careful human edit.

Refine rewrites for rhythm, clarity and naturalness while preserving every fact, name, number, quote and citation. Before writing anything, Veritext first reviews your draft against your selected Strengthen focus areas and uses those findings to target the edit — so the rewrite fixes diagnosed problems (a weak topic sentence, a vague claim, a monotonous stretch) instead of polishing blindly. Findings that would need new evidence, data or citations are never acted on automatically; those remain yours to address.

Short texts: three takes

Up to about 700 words, Refine writes three distinct versions in different voices. Pick the one closest to your intent with Use this, then keep working on it.

Long documents: section by section

Longer documents are split at paragraph boundaries into sections and refined in order, with a live tracker:

Cobalt = refined · pulsing tint = being written now · amber = that section kept its original text (nothing is ever lost — a section that can’t be refined stays as you wrote it). Long-press a tile to see its word count.

A long document takes a few minutes; the header percentage and the status bar track progress. The finished view reports how the run went — e.g. 9 sections · 1 kept original · 11 findings applied.

Working with the result

Compare view — original and refined side by side. Changed words appear highlighted; tap any green word to see drop-in alternatives and swap one in.
Edit & enhance — switch the refined column into an editor. Select any span and use Enhance selection (section 06) on it.
Re-refine — run a deeper pass on the current version when the first polish isn’t enough.
Apply to original — replace the main editor’s text with the refined version, ready for a fresh originality check or export.
Patch original / Plain .docx / .txt / .md / .html — export options (section 07).

Tone (academic / neutral / conversational), edit strength (light / balanced / full rewrite), length preservation and citation protection are all set in Settings, and apply to every refine.

05Strengthen

An editorial review of the work itself — advisory, never a rewrite.

Strengthen reads your draft like a demanding tutor and returns specific, actionable notes. You choose the focus with the chips under the action buttons; each active focus produces its own section of findings:

Focus	What it examines
Argument	Your central thesis, claims asserted without support, weak logic, and counterpoints you should address.
Structure	Section and paragraph order, topic sentences, transitions, and intro/conclusion alignment.
Sources	Passages leaning on quotation or tracking a source — with the honest fix: attribute and cite, and turn borrowed wording into your own analysis.
Prose	Wordy, unclear, passive or clichéd spots, filler, and monotonous rhythm — each with a quoted excerpt and a targeted fix.

The metrics row

Metric	Reading it
avg sentence	Mean sentence length in words.
rhythm ±	How much sentence lengths vary. Very low variance reads flat; mixing short and long sentences reads human.
reading grade	Approximate grade level. Academic prose usually sits around 12–16; higher often means overlong sentences.
clichés	Count of stock phrases worth cutting (“leverage”, “robust”, “rich tapestry”…). The found ones are listed at the end.
passive ≈	Approximate passive constructions. Some are fine; many in a row deaden the writing.
quoted ≈	Approximate quoted passages — a high count suggests the draft leans on sources instead of analysis.
word mix	Spread between plain and precise vocabulary. Human writing mixes both; a low value means everything sits in the medium-formal middle.
opener variety	How varied your sentence openings are. Long runs starting with “The / This / It” read flat and machine-like.
hedges /100w	Hedging words (may, might, potentially…) per 100 words. Commit where the evidence supports it — stacked hedges weaken claims.

Metrics are rough guides, not targets.

Acting on a card

Fix in editor → / Find in editor → — the flagged line is highlighted in your document and the Enhance sheet opens with that card’s note attached, so the suggestions target the diagnosed problem.
Locate section → — for document-level advice (“move this content”, “add a section”), Veritext jumps you to the relevant section heading in the body so you can act on it. Notes that apply to the whole document say so.

Reviewing a selection

Select a passage of 25+ words in the editor before tapping Strengthen and the review scopes to just that passage — a banner confirms the scope.

06Enhance selection

Precision editing for exactly the words you highlight.

Select any span in the main editor (or in the refined editor). An ✦ Enhance selection pill appears; tap it to open the Enhance sheet. If you arrived from a Strengthen card, the card’s note is shown at the top and suggestions arrive automatically.

Action	What you get
Smart refine	Three ranked drop-in replacements for the span, ordered most-conservative first, informed by your Strengthen focus and any attached card note. Meaning, facts, tone and the span’s grammatical role are preserved; where attribution is the right fix, one option credits the source plainly instead of rewording it.
Enrich wording	Four alternative phrasings that read clearer and more precise.
Make clearer	Two simplified versions, shortest first.
Restructure completely	Three structurally different versions of the span, same meaning and facts.

Tap Use this on any option and it drops into your document at the exact selection, with the replacement highlighted so you can see what changed.

07Finalize & export

Two different .docx buttons — know which one you want.

Patch original .docx — keeps your layout

The highlighted button in Finalize & download (also Patch original in the Writing studio). It takes your improved text and writes it into your original Word file, paragraph by paragraph, keeping the document’s design intact:

Preserved untouched: cover page, table of contents, tables, figures and images, headers and footers, headings and captions, styles and fonts.
Updated: matched body paragraphs receive your new text, keeping each paragraph’s style.
Safe by design: a paragraph without a confident match keeps its original text — the failure mode is “unchanged”, never “mangled”.

Tap Patch original .docx. If you imported a Word file, Veritext already has it. If you imported a PDF or pasted text, a file picker asks for the original .docx — the file the PDF was exported from.
Read the result dialog. Every patch ends in an explicit report — no file is ever saved without one. The download is named YourFile — refined.docx.
Open in Word and update the TOC. Right-click the table of contents → Update field, since text lengths shift slightly. Give patched paragraphs a quick skim — bolding inside a rewritten sentence can’t be carried onto new wording.

Reading the patch result

Result	What it means
Patched successfully	Most body paragraphs matched and received your new text; the count and file name are shown. Update the TOC and skim the pages.
Patched — but check it	Fewer than 40% of paragraphs matched. The file was saved, but most of it is unchanged — usually the wrong original was chosen, or the edited text has drifted far from this document. Verify before trusting it.
Patch didn’t take place	No file was saved. The dialog states the reason, and Veritext forgets the failed file so a retry always asks for the right one.

If patching keeps failing

Your edits are never at risk — the text stays in the editor and is auto-saved on this device. The failure dialog offers the alternatives directly: Try another file (re-pick the correct original), Plain .docx, .txt, or Copy text. The ultimate fallback always works: copy the text, open your original document in Word, and paste the updated sections in yourself — the formatting chore is real, but the writing is safe.

PDF layout cannot round-trip. A PDF is a picture of a page, not editable text — no tool can rebuild its layout from extracted text. If you only have a PDF, open it in Word first (Word converts PDF to an editable document) and use that as the patch target.

Plain exports

Download .docx (plain) produces a simple, unstyled Word document of the editor text; .txt, .md and .html do the same in those formats. Use these for drafts and hand-offs, not for the final formatted submission.

08Settings

The gear in the header. Settings persist between sessions.

Setting	What it controls
Sentences to check	Fast · 8, Standard · 12, or Deep · 18. Each sampled sentence is one live search — more sentences, more coverage, longer run.
Match sensitivity	High flags loose paraphrase too; Balanced is recommended; Strict flags near-verbatim only.
Refine — tone	Academic, Neutral or Conversational voice for every rewrite and suggestion.
Refine — strength	Light polish, Balanced, or Full rewrite.
Preserve length	Keeps rewrites within about 10% of the original length.
Keep citations & quotes	On by default — references, URLs and quoted text pass through rewrites untouched.

09Tips & troubleshooting

Working honestly

Veritext’s principle: improvement stays yours. Citations are attached automatically because crediting a source is mechanical; rewording flagged material is not automated because machine-restructured text is both detectable and academically riskier than the overlap it hides. Use the Direction notes and Strengthen feedback to rebuild flagged points from your own understanding — that’s what actually clears them.

A No web match verdict means no overlap action is needed — but a borrowed fact or idea still deserves a citation even in your own words.
Run Check originality again after resolving flags; the score only updates on a fresh check.

Common questions

Symptom	Fix
Header shows Offline	Search and writing services aren’t reachable. Check your connection and reload the app.
A refine “took too long and timed out”	Try again, or refine a shorter passage. Very long documents run for several minutes — keep the app in the foreground.
Amber tiles in the section tracker	Those sections kept their original text after a failed attempt. Re-refine, or select just that passage and refine it alone.
“Couldn’t auto-locate that line”	The quoted text has drifted from the document (usually after edits). Search the editor for its first few words.
“Patch didn’t take place” dialog	No file was saved. Use the dialog’s buttons: retry with the correct original, or save your edits as plain .docx / .txt / copied text — they’re still in the editor.
“Patched — but check it” warning	Very few paragraphs matched. Confirm you picked the document your edits actually came from, then patch again.
Patch says “that is a plain Veritext export”	You picked a Veritext download as the patch target. Choose your original Word file — the one with your layout.
The app reloaded and my text is back?	That’s draft autosave — “Draft restored” means your last editor state was recovered from this device. Tap Clear to discard it.
The exported .docx lost my design	You used a plain export. Use Patch original .docx — keeps your layout instead (section 07).
My file didn’t import cleanly	Complex PDFs extract with joined lines and table fragments. Import the .docx instead when you have it — it extracts cleaner and enables patching.