Whether you are working alone or with other people inside the Shorthand editor, it can be useful to attach comments and notes to your stories to aid with drafting, revision, and approval. These notes aren't published with your story, but instead only appear within the editor itself to be seen by you and your story collaborators.

Comments can be associated with whole story sections (useful for large comments/directions such as "This section needs to be re-written" or "Add a new background image") or can be associated with smaller highlighted pieces of text ( useful when only a portion of text needs commenting eg: "Check the spelling of this name").

Within the Editor and on the Shorthand dashboard, functionality associated with comments is indicated with a speech-bubble icon.

To add comments to a specific section, the fastest method may be to scroll to the appropriate section, and then click the comment icon in the top-left of that section:

Doing so will open the comments panel on the right side of the screen. The panel enables making and reviewing comments.

The panel is divided into sections that correspond to the sections in the story. In this way it is easy to see which section each comment relates to. As you scroll down in the editor, you will see each of the comment sections, with a new blank entry box for each section.

To make a comment, simply type it in the box:

The comments panel can also be opened by clicking the comment tab at the top of the editor:

To comment on a particular piece of text, highlight it in the editor and click on the comment icon in the menu bar that pops up:

The comments panel will open on the right, and the text box into which you write your comment will be directly linked to the text that was highlighted. After you submit the comment by clicking the 'ADD COMMENT' button, you will see that mousing over the comment itself will change the highlight colour of the text in the editor. In this way it can easily be determined which piece of story text any comment refers to.

Each section of your story can have multiple comments.

Your story collaborators that have either 'owner' or 'editor' access to the story can also see and action any of the comments associated with the story and make their own comments.

Stories with comments are shown on your dashboard with a comment icon in their bottom-right corner. If you are collaborating on a story and it has comments that you have not yet seen, the icon will have a red notification dot:

Within the editor, sections that have comments can be easily identified by icons next to their thumbnails on the left:

Clicking any of those icons will open the comments panel at the appropriate section to show its related comments.

Each comment is identified with the name and avatar of the collaborator who made the comment and the date and time at which it was made.

To draw the attention of individual collaborators on a story, type an @ symbol within a comment box, and you will be shown the names of story collaborators to choose from. Selecting their name from the list will include it in the comment and send them a notification when the comment is added.

Each comment has a 'REPLY' button.

Clicking REPLY, rather than adding a new comment, provides a way to keep converstion about a particular point linked. Replies to comments are shown indented and with a lighter background:

The three-dot menu in the top-right of each comment allows for some additional actions, including editing, resolving, and deleting the comment:

Any collaborator can choose to 'resolve' any comment. Doing so marks the comment with a 'RESOLVED' label, though the comment will remain visible in the comments panel.

You can edit your own comments to change the text, or delete the comment to remove it completely from the comments panel. You cannot edit or delete the comments of other collaborators.

The comments panel enables filtering and sorting the displayed comments to show, for example, only resolved comments, sorted by newest first:

By default you will receive email notifications when your story collaborators comment on the story. You can change the types of notifications you receive, and their frequency, in your individual user profile settings. Options include receiving notifications regardless of your role with the story, only when you are the story owner, or no notifications at all. You can choose from receiving notification of any comment, or to only be notified about comments where you are specifically mentioned by name, etc.