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Who can use Format
You must be 13 or older. If you are under 18, use Format with the permission of a parent or guardian.
Your account
- Sign up with an email address you can receive mail at. One person per account.
- Keep your password and recovery codes to yourself. You are responsible for what happens in your account. If you think someone else got in, reset your password and email support@formatwriter.com.
- Without an account, your papers belong to a library key saved in your browser. Anyone with your "Use on another device" link can open them. We keep only a hash of the key, so if you lose it, we cannot get those papers back for you.
Your writing
You own what you write in Format. We claim no ownership of it.
So Format can work, you let us store, copy, process and display your writing and its edit history, only to run Format for you: to save and sync it, format and export it, show it to the people you share it with, and play it through replay links you make. This permission ends when you delete the writing, apart from copies in backups until they age out and anything you wrote in someone else's shared paper.
You need the right to put what you write and paste into Format, including anything you share with others.
Academic integrity
Format formats papers and citations. It does not write papers for you. Follow your school's academic integrity rules and your instructor's instructions, including on working with others and citing sources. You are responsible for the work you hand in.
Source lookups and formatted citations can be wrong or incomplete. Check them against the source and your style guide before you hand in a paper.
The writing report and replay show when text was typed and when it was pasted. They are a record of what happened in Format, not a ruling on who wrote a paper or whether it is original.
What you may not do
- Break the law or anyone's rights, including copyright, with what you write or share.
- Use shared papers or invites to harass anyone, threaten them, post their private information, or send spam.
- Get into accounts or papers that are not yours, or test Format's security in ways that touch other people's data. If you find a problem, report it.
- Overload Format, get around its limits, or run automated traffic against it.
- Resell Format, or copy it and present it as your own.
Writing together
When you share a paper, anyone signed in who has the link can join while the link is on, so send it only to people you mean to. Everyone with access can edit the paper and sees the others' edits, names and email addresses.
The paper stays in its owner's account, under the owner's plan. The owner can remove people, turn the link off or delete the paper, which closes it for everyone. Anyone else can leave. What you wrote stays in the paper after you leave, are removed or delete your account.
Free and Pro
- Free
- MLA 9 and APA 7, up to 10 sources per paper and 20 source lookups a month.
- Pro
- $4 a month or $29 a year, in US dollars. Adds every citation style, unlimited sources and lookups, the writing report with its replay link, and editor themes.
- Payment
- Through Stripe, which handles your card. Format never sees your card details.
- Renewal
- Pro renews automatically at the end of each month or year until you cancel.
- Canceling
- Any time, from Manage billing on your account page. Pro stays on until the end of the period you paid for, then your account moves to Free. Your papers stay.
- Refunds
- Canceling stops the next charge. It does not refund the period you already paid for. If you think you were charged by mistake, email support@formatwriter.com.
- Failed payments
- If a renewal does not go through, Stripe retries your card over the next few days, and you keep Pro while it does.
- Deleting your account
- Ends Pro at once, without a refund for the rest of the period.
- Price changes
- We will email you before a new price applies to your plan.
The service, as is
Format is provided as is and as available. We work to keep it running and your writing safe, but we do not promise it will always be available, free of errors, or that its formatting will match every instructor's rules. Format may add, change or remove features.
Keep your own copies of work that matters. Download all papers, in the documents list, saves every paper in one file.
Limits of liability
As far as the law allows, Format is not responsible for indirect losses that come from using it or not being able to, such as a lost grade, lost time or lost work. Format's total responsibility for any claim is limited to what you paid for Pro in the 12 months before the claim.
Some places do not allow these limits. Where they are not allowed, they do not apply to you.
Ending
You can stop using Format at any time and delete your account on the account page.
We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms or puts Format or the people who use it at risk. When we can, we will tell you why first and give you time to download your papers.
Changes to these terms
When these terms change, the date at the top changes with it. Before a significant change takes effect, we email everyone with an account. If you keep using Format after that, the new terms apply.
Governing law
Colorado law governs these terms, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute about them or about Format is decided in the state or federal courts in El Paso County, Colorado, and you and we agree to those courts. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies.
Contact
Questions about these terms go to support@formatwriter.com. Format is run by The Daily ROI LLC, Colorado Springs, Colorado.