Highland

Although Highland 2 was originally developed for screenwriting, many novelists use it for books. In fact, I wrote all three [*Arlo Finch*](https://johnaugust.com/arlo-finch) novels entirely in Highland.

Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Wonder Boys and many other acclaimed novels, has been writing in Highland for years.

Like most authors, he uses the Manuscript template for submitting his books. But he recently wrote in with a request:

> I’d like a kind of “typeset literary novel” template to put the text into when reading to revise. Somehow it makes my judgment harsher.

Highland 2 already had a Novel template, but Chabon wanted something that more closely matched the layout and styling of a printed book in galley format. We were happy to oblige.

Highland 2.9.3 features an all-new Novel template to match Chabon’s specifications:

– Full justification
– Small caps for the first line in a section
– Custom three-asterisk dividers (which replace – – -)
– Choice of five typefaces (Amiri, Tex Gyre Schola, Baskerville, Cormaront Garamond and Times New Roman)

Here’s a preview in Amiri, an Old Style serif typeface:

Highland 2 works great under all recent versions of macOS (including Big Sur), and runs natively on the new M1 Macs. You can find it on the [Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/highland-2/id1171820258?mt=12).

[Highland 2.9](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/) runs natively on Apple’s speedy new M1 processor, the chip in its latest Macs.

Naturally, we wanted to see how much faster it runs on the new hardware. The challenge is that Highland 2 is already very, very fast. It’s hard to find an operation that takes long enough to measure with a stopwatch.

So we went back to an earlier challenge, looking at how long it takes to open Tolstoy’s *War and Peace*. Weighing in at more than 500,000 words, this [plain text document](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2600) is 4,132 pages long when formatted. When developing Highland 2, we used it as a test case because it’s literally 20 times longer than the average feature length screenplay. We figured if Highland could handle such a massive file, then it could handle any screenplay we threw at it.

In our [2018 test](https://johnaugust.com/2018/how-and-why-to-write-a-novel-in-highland-2), we compared Highland 2’s performance against other word processors. Microsoft Word struggled, taking more than six minutes to open the file. Apple’s Pages fared better, at 47 seconds. Highland 2 opened it in just 9 seconds.

Computers have gotten faster, so we decided to evaluate performance on both an early 2020 Intel MacBook Air and the new M1 MacBook Air. We measured how long it took to open *War and Peace* and scroll to the bottom (to be certain it’s fully loaded).

| | 2018 MacBook Pro | 2020 MacBook Air | 2020 MacBook Air M1 |
|————|—————–:|—————–:|——————–:|
| Highland 2 | 9s | 6s | 3s |
| Pages | 47s | 16s | 9s |
| Word | 6m 35s | 4m 55s | 3m 8s |

This chart shows the results more clearly (shorter bars are better).

Getting rid of Word makes the improvements to Highland and Pages more apparent.

Three seconds is honestly a bit conservative for Highland 2. As you can see in the video, we’re stopping the timer when we reach the bottom of the document, but it’s clearly already loaded.

Three takeaways:

– The new Macs are faster for all three apps.
– Word continues to be laughably slow for very long documents.
– If you’re writing a sequel to *War and Peace,* Highland 2 is still your best bet. And it remains a fantastic choice for screenplays.

You can find Highland 2 on the [Mac App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/highland-2/id1171820258?mt=12).

Article Update February 2026: Highland 2 has officially been updated to Highland Pro. Students and educators can access information about free student and educator licenses at this link!

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We offer a free full version of Highland 2 for students enrolled in university writing programs, including film schools. Over the past few months, we’ve signed up programs at the Ivy Leagues, big state schools and tiny London colleges.

Here’s how the process works:

1. The writing professor or instructor emails us at brand@johnaugust.com.
2. We send back instructions for signing up their students. Important: We can only sign up students with their official school email addresses (such as .edu).
3. Once they’re in our system, we send each student an email confirmation.
4. Confirmed students use their school email address to unlock Highland 2.

The student edition of Highland 2 is time-limited to the duration of studies. After that, it reverts to Highland 2 Basic, which has most of the same features but includes a watermark when printing or exporting to PDF.

If you’re an instructor who wants your students to have access to Highland 2, send us an email to brand@johnaugust.com. If you’re a student in a university writing program who wants to use Highland 2, send your instructor a link to this post.