Terms of Use

1. About Pilcrow

Pilcrow is an independent educational and literary project. In these Terms, “Pilcrow,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to the Pilcrow project.

Pilcrow helps Educators discover human-reviewed literary Works and helps Writers submit Works for editorial review and possible classroom publication. Eligible adults may create an account through an invitation or direct signup. The pilot is free, limited, and still being evaluated.

2. Who may use an account

You must be at least 18 years old to create or use a Pilcrow account. The current pilot does not offer student accounts and must not be used to submit student names, rosters, contact information, grades, or other student-level information.

Public visitors may browse material made publicly available without creating an account.

3. Accounts and access

You may create an account through an invitation or direct signup. Accounts are personal. Provide accurate information, keep access to your email and account secure, and tell Pilcrow through the Contact page if you believe your account has been used without permission. Invitation links are personal; do not share one or use another person’s account.

Pilcrow may suspend an account or restrict access when reasonably necessary to protect a person, a Work, the service, or the integrity of the pilot.

4. Acceptable use

You may use Pilcrow only for lawful literary, editorial, and educational purposes. You may not:

• upload or share material you do not have permission to use;
• submit malware, harmful code, deceptive information, or material intended to interfere with the service;
• attempt to access another person’s private account, submission, collection, or review record;
• scrape, bulk-download, republish, sell, or build a dataset from Pilcrow Works;
• use a Pilcrow Work to train or evaluate an AI model without separate written permission from the applicable copyright owner; or
• remove or obscure authorship, copyright, credit, or classroom-use notices.

5. Writers and submitted Works

Writers keep copyright in their Works. Submitting a Work does not transfer copyright to Pilcrow and does not prevent the Writer from publishing or licensing the Work elsewhere.

Each submission is also governed by the Writer Submission and Publication License accepted for the exact submitted version. Pilcrow may decline a submission, request changes, decide not to publish, or later restrict or remove a Work. Pilcrow does not promise acceptance, publication, readership, classroom use, or a particular response time unless a specific current notice says otherwise.

Pilcrow may make ordinary formatting changes that do not alter the Writer’s words, punctuation, meaningful emphasis, paragraph or stanza structure, or ordering. Any material change to the literary text requires a new version and the Writer’s confirmation before publication.

6. Educators and classroom use

An Educator may print and distribute an eligible Work only as permitted by the Classroom Use Terms and the permission notice shown with that Work. Public availability alone does not grant broader republication, adaptation, resale, or public-posting rights.

Educators are responsible for deciding whether a Work and its content notes are appropriate for their own students, course, and community. Pilcrow’s grade, difficulty, reading-time, and instructional-use descriptions are human-reviewed aids, not guarantees.

7. Pilcrow materials

Individual Writers keep their Works. Pilcrow branding, editorial copy, site materials, and original teaching materials belong to their identified creators or licensors. Educators may adapt Pilcrow teaching materials for their own noncommercial classes under the Classroom Use Terms. No other license is granted by these Terms.

8. Private review and AI-assisted tools

When the Writer separately grants optional permission for the exact Work version, authorized Pilcrow administrators may use AI-assisted tools privately to help prepare internal summaries, descriptive metadata, first drafts of teaching materials, and signals that support search, matching, and recommendations among Pilcrow Works. AI does not edit, rewrite, translate, abridge, expand, or replace a submitted literary Work. The submitted and approved Work remains unchanged unless the Writer separately confirms a new human-reviewed content version. A person makes every final editorial, rights, publication, content-note, and classroom-suitability decision.

Pilcrow will send a submitted Work to an AI service only when the service and its configured terms do not permit the Work to be used to train a general-purpose model and when retention is limited as described in the Privacy Notice. AI-assisted review does not make a private Work public.

9. Privacy

The Privacy Notice explains what Pilcrow collects, why it is used, when service providers process it, and how long it is kept. Do not submit confidential personal information that Pilcrow does not request.

10. Service communications

Pilcrow may send account, invitation, review, publication, rights, security, and classroom-use messages needed to operate the pilot. Optional reminders may be turned off where the service provides that choice. The pilot does not use account information for third-party advertising.

11. Copyright and other concerns

If you believe material on Pilcrow infringes your rights, identifies you incorrectly, or should be restricted for privacy or safety reasons, use the Contact page and identify the Work, the concern, your relationship to the material, and a way Pilcrow may contact you. Pilcrow may temporarily restrict access while reviewing a credible report.

12. Availability and responsibility

Pilcrow is a small validation-stage pilot provided on an “as available” basis. To the extent permitted by law, Pilcrow does not make warranties that the service will always be available, error-free, or suitable for a particular educational purpose.

To the extent permitted by law, the Pilcrow project will not be responsible for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from use of the pilot. Nothing in these Terms limits responsibility that cannot lawfully be limited.

13. Ending use

You may stop using Pilcrow or request account closure through the Contact page. Writers may request withdrawal or removal of a Work as described in the Writer Submission and Publication License. Pilcrow may retain limited rights, consent, security, and audit records as described in the Privacy Notice.

14. Changes to these Terms

Pilcrow may update these Terms as the pilot changes. The current version and effective date will appear on this page. A material change affecting submitted Works, classroom permission, or a new use of private information will not apply retroactively without clear notice and any new acceptance that is reasonably required.

15. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except where mandatory law provides otherwise. If part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the remaining parts continue to apply.

16. Contact

Questions, correction requests, account-closure requests, and legal or copyright concerns may be submitted through the Pilcrow Contact page.