JESSay

JESSay is an open-source framework and file format designed to facilitate writing, formatting, and publishing long-form essays on the web. It combines a human-readable markup language with integrated citation management and output pipelines, enabling authors to render content to HTML, PDF, or EPUB while preserving semantic structure and reproducibility.

The project originated in the late 2010s as a collaboration among educators, writers, and developers seeking to improve accessibility and consistency in online scholarship. The name is commonly treated as an acronym, though there is no universally official expansion. The first stable release appeared in 2020 under an open-source license, with ongoing community development and governance by a core team and contributor network.

Key features of JESSay include a readable source format, support for cross-references and footnotes, and built-in bibliography handling that can interoperate with BibTeX-like inputs. It offers templates for styling, media embedding, and code or data linking to essays, along with export pipelines to HTML, PDF, and EPUB. The framework also supports collaborative editing workflows, plugin extensions, and a command-line compiler, with optional graphical editors available through community projects.

Usage typically involves writing content in files with a .jes extension, compiling them into publishable outputs, and managing citations via a structured bibliography section. JESSay is used by educators, independent researchers, and some small publishing projects aiming for repeatable formatting and web-ready outputs without relying solely on word processors.

Reception and status: JESSay maintains a modest but active community and is one option among several tools for long-form web publishing. Critics point to a learning curve and interoperability gaps with other publishing ecosystems. It remains one of multiple approaches to producing structured scholarly essays on the web.

See also: Markdown, LaTeX, Pandoc, AsciiDoc, reStructuredText.