Folio Writer

The reviewer round trip:
from comments to a response letter

"Major revisions." Every point must be answered twice — once in the manuscript, once in a letter that walks the editor through what you did. The usual way is two windows, a review PDF, and an afternoon of copy-paste. Here's the Folio Writer way: the remarks, the revisions, and the letter all come from the same place.

Step 1 · Get the reviewer's remarks into the project

Reviewer points live as comments: anchored to the passage they're about, carrying their author, kept out of the manuscript text itself (commented passages are highlighted in the editor, and every remark is listed in the Inspector's Comments section). Three ways in:

1. Type them. Working from a review PDF? Select the passage each point refers to, add a comment, and paste the reviewer's remark. Set the author name to "Reviewer 1" / "Reviewer 2" so attribution follows each point through the whole trip.
2. Import a Word review. If the feedback arrived as a .docx with bubbles and tracked changes — a co-author, a supervisor, an editor — Import Review reads it directly: their comments become Folio comments, their edits become suggestions (attributed proposals you accept or reject one by one). Nothing touches your manuscript without your say-so.
3. General remarks ("the introduction is too long") can anchor to the section heading they're about — the letter will locate them by document either way.

Step 2 · Revise with Track Changes on

Turn tracking on and work through the points. Every revision is recorded as a readable change in the text (see Track Changes in plain text) — and this is what makes the letter almost write itself: because the remarks know which passage they're about and the tracked changes know what you did to it, Folio Writer can match them up. Resolve a point's comment when you're satisfied; unresolved ones stay visible so nothing slips.

Step 3 · Build the letter

The Response to Reviewers builder assembles the skeleton of your letter from everything above: every point quoted, attributed, and located, ordered by where it falls in the manuscript (not the order the remarks happened to be typed), with the concrete revisions matched to each point and summarized — inserted this, deleted that, "old wording" → "new wording".

The replies are left blank on purpose. What to say to Reviewer 2 is the one part of this that is actually writing — a generated paragraph there would be something to delete while sounding just plausible enough to keep. The builder does the bookkeeping; the arguing is yours.

Step 4 · Send everything back

1. The revised manuscript — compile with changes accepted for a clean copy, or shown if the journal wants a marked-up version: a Word file carries them as native tracked changes; a PDF shows colored insertions and deletions. Both from the same plain-text source, no manual second copy.
2. The response letter — finish your replies and compile it like any other document.
3. For a co-author pass first — export a .docx with your proposed changes as real tracked changes and the comments as review bubbles; when it comes back, Import Review closes the loop again.

Why this beats two windows and a PDF

Nothing is retyped, so nothing is mistyped: the quote in your letter is the reviewer's remark as recorded, the change summary is derived from the actual edit, and the order matches the manuscript the editor is holding. When a revision round drags on for months, the project still holds every remark, every response, and every version — as plain files you own.

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