Everything you need to know before claiming your sentence.
Short version: You pay $10 once. You write one sentence. It stays on the internet permanently, attached to your name, with its own page and number. You don't own the words — you own the slot. Read the rest if you want the detail.
Own A Sentence is a permanent public archive of one million written sentence slots. Each slot can be claimed once, by one person, for $10.00 USD. Once claimed and approved, your sentence gets a permanent public page, a unique number, a shareable image, and a certificate of display rights.
It is not social media. There are no followers, no feeds to game, no algorithms deciding who sees your sentence. It is simply a permanent record of what you chose to say when you had one sentence.
You are buying a permanent display slot in the Own A Sentence public archive. Specifically, you receive:
ownasentence.com/sentence/NYou are not buying a domain, a hosting account, or a product with ongoing subscription costs. You pay once. The sentence stays.
You own the display slot — your permanent place in the archive at a specific number. That slot is yours and cannot be taken by anyone else.
You retain copyright in the original creative content of your sentence, to the extent that copyright exists in it under applicable law. Short phrases and common expressions are generally not protected by copyright in most jurisdictions — what you are purchasing here is not a copyright claim, it is a display right.
By submitting, you grant Own A Sentence an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty-free licence to display your sentence as part of the archive. See our Terms of Service for the full licence terms.
Your sentence is publicly displayed and can be read, shared, and quoted by anyone — that is the nature of a public archive. Own A Sentence will not licence your sentence to third parties for commercial use without your permission. If you encounter your sentence being misused commercially, contact us via the Contact form.
Three reasons.
Seriousness. A $10 fee means people think before they submit. The archive is permanent — it should contain sentences worth keeping. Free platforms fill up with noise. This one is designed not to.
Sustainability. The fee funds the infrastructure required to keep the archive online permanently — hosting, backups, domain renewal, and maintenance. A one-time fee that covers a permanent slot requires that fee to be meaningful enough to fund long-term operations.
Scarcity. One million slots at $10 each creates a finite, serious archive. It is not infinite. The number matters.
Yes. Permanence is the core design principle of Own A Sentence. Once your sentence is approved and published:
If Own A Sentence is ever permanently discontinued, we will provide at least 90 days' notice on the homepage, make the full archive available for public download in CSV and JSON formats, and issue pro-rated refunds to purchasers within 12 months of their purchase date. See our Preservation & Continuity page for the full commitment.
No. The archive is immutable by design. There are no edits, no corrections, and no substitutions after payment is confirmed.
Read your sentence three times before paying. Typos, autocorrect errors, and second thoughts are not grounds for a refund. The permanence is a feature, not a limitation.
The only changes possible after purchase: anonymising your display name upon a valid GDPR request, removing your optional URL on request, or full removal if your sentence violates our Content Policy.
Only in the following circumstances:
If your sentence is removed for a Content Policy violation, you will not receive a refund if the violation was deliberate. If we remove it in error, you will receive a full refund.
We do not remove sentences because someone disagrees with them, finds them offensive without a policy violation, or requests removal after a change of mind.
Yes. Each purchase claims one slot. You can make multiple separate purchases to claim multiple sentences. Each will have its own unique number, page, and certificate.
Own A Sentence is an English-language platform — the interface, moderation, and search system operate in English. However, sentence content in any language is accepted.
Latin-script languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, all Slavic Latin scripts, Romanian, and all other European scripts) are supported fully in search. Cyrillic and Arabic scripts have dedicated search indexes. Sentences in any language are subject to the same Content Policy — writing in another language does not reduce your responsibility for what you write.
Every submitted sentence passes through a multi-layer moderation system before being published:
Moderation decisions are final. We do not correspond about individual moderation outcomes beyond confirming whether a refund has been issued.
Every approved sentence has:
ownasentence.com/sentence/NThe certificate is a downloadable PDF that documents your display rights — your sentence, your number, your display name, and the date it was published. It is a record of your place in the archive.
It is not a legal certificate of copyright ownership. It does not grant trademark rights. It does not constitute proof of ownership of ordinary words or phrases. It represents your permanent slot in the Own A Sentence public archive.
Not currently. Transfer and gifting functionality is planned for a future release. When available, transfers will involve a process to verify consent from both parties and may include a transfer fee.
Growth improves the archive's long-term sustainability. As more slots are claimed, the revenue base for hosting, backup, and maintenance grows with it. A larger archive is a more valuable archive — your sentence becomes part of a larger permanent record.
Technical scaling is designed in from the start: the database and search system are built to handle the full one million sentences without architectural changes. See our Preservation & Continuity page for details on infrastructure commitments.
All contact goes through our Contact form. We do not publish direct email addresses publicly to prevent harvesting. The contact form routes your message to the right inbox based on the subject you select — billing, legal, privacy, press, or general enquiry. We respond within 2 business days.
Own A Sentence uses only essential session data to keep forms secure, prevent abuse, remember this notice during the current browser session, and process payments through Stripe. We do not use advertising trackers. Sentences you submit may become part of the public archive.