Scribble glossary

The words Scribble uses, defined. The two worth learning first: a credit is one card, and an arrival window is a range of days, never a promised delivery date.

Arrival window: The range of days a card is expected to land in: four to five days, always ending on the date you asked it to arrive by. Never a promise about a single day. See arrival windows.
Arrive-by date: The one date anybody sets. Everything else — when the card is written, packed and posted — is worked out backwards from it.
Automation: An evergreen rule that creates cards on its own, on a daily schedule. See how automations work.
Campaign: A batch of cards you build and schedule yourself, through the six-step wizard. One or two cards go through Send a card instead, which produces a campaign of one underneath.
Send a card: The screen for one to four cards: four questions on one page with the card and envelope drawn beside you. Underneath it creates a campaign of one, so it uses the same credit hold, the same proofing and the same production floor. See sending a single card.
Handwriting size: Chosen automatically by the message composer. A short note starts with a 3.5 mm capital-path target; the lowercase body is checked separately. Every card in a campaign uses one size that fits the merged messages. See handwriting size.
Return address: The address on the back of the envelope, and where a card comes back to if it cannot be delivered. An organization can keep several — head office, regional offices — with one as the default, and every send can pick a different one. Set them up in Settings.
Proof: A scaled preview of the card and envelope, using the card geometry and handwriting paths. Check your words and their placement here. The physical size on screen depends on your device and zoom, and letter shapes vary between cards.
Card code: The identifier for one physical card, like SC-NH4DERB. Six payload characters plus a check character, in an alphabet with no I, L, O or U so it cannot be misread aloud. It follows the card through production and appears on the back cover and the envelope.
Credit: One card, including the card, the envelope, the writing and US postage. Bought outright, never expires. See how credits work.
Design: The artwork on the front of a card plus the layout of the inside, saved together and reusable.
Do-not-mail list: People and households nobody in your company can write to. Survives a re-import recreating a contact you deleted. See do-not-mail.
Held: A card that needs a person before it can be made, almost always because the address cannot be written on an envelope. A held card is never charged. Appears as blocked in the API.
House handwriting: Your organization's default handwriting style. Every campaign and automation inherits it unless it picks its own, and so does every card sent through the API or an inbound hook that names no handwriting of its own.
Inbound hook: A URL that sends one card every time something POSTs JSON to it. The token in the URL is the credential. See inbound hooks.
List: A saved group of contacts that an automation watches. Campaigns cannot point at a list yet.
Merge field: A placeholder like {{first_name}} replaced per recipient. See merge fields.
Occurrence: One instance of a date an automation acts on: this year's birthday for this person. The unit the duplicate guard is keyed on.
Physical proof: A real card, actually written and posted to you, before a run goes out. Offered on the review step of a campaign.
Posted: Handed to USPS. The point at which a card leaves Scribble's control.
Printed: In Scribble, this word only ever describes the artwork on the card stock. Nothing about the handwriting is printed.
Return address: Your organization's address, written on the back of every envelope. Required before any campaign can go out, because undeliverable US mail with no return address is destroyed rather than returned.
Scope: What an API key is allowed to do: cards:send, cards:read, contacts:read, contacts:write.
Suppression: The technical name for an entry on the do-not-mail list.
Unverified: The status every address carries. Scribble checks the shape of an address, not whether post arrives there.
Written: What Scribble does to a card: a machine holds a real pen and drags it across paper. The correct word for our output in every context.

Last checked against the product on 2026-09-06. Something wrong or missing? Tell us.