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Comment by GCA10 | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't resist the temptation. I grabbed the opening paragraph of Hemingway's own short story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" -- and put it to the test.

Danger alert! Danger alert!

The master himself opens with a 110-word, two-sentence paragraph. The first sentence is flagged yellow. The second one is flagged red. By the software's system, Hemingway's own writing is in trouble.

Truth is, this app is a nifty diagnostic tool that will help you avoid some writing goofs, if you use it judiciously. But if you let it dictate every change, you'll lose the full rhythms of good writing.

Even a master of lean writing (Hemingway himself) knew when to bulk up, even for just a moment, to create a cadence that could surprise and intrigue us.

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> By the software's system, Hemingway's own writing is in trouble.

> Truth is, this app is a nifty diagnostic tool that will help you avoid some writing goofs, if you use it judiciously. But if you let it dictate every change, you'll lose the full rhythms of good writing.

That is why I prefer to use ghostwriter app[0], which has "Hemingway Mode", but I may enable or disable it on my wish.[1]

[0] https://github.com/wereturtle/ghostwriter

[1] http://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/

Unless I'm missing something, the "Hemingway Mode" in ghostwriter is not the same as the feature offered by the other editor:

"Clicking on the "Hemingway" button in the lower right corner of the editor will disable your backspace and delete keys, creating a typewriter experience. This feature is especially useful if you want to avoid editing and force yourself to write." (From the second link you posted)

I've been using this app for a few years, just as you recommend. It's a tool, and a good one in certain circumstances. Hopefully folks don't assume it will make them write like Hemingway!

That’s a really good point, and is also how I see other similar apps like grammarly.

They can help highlight issues and it’s up to you to decide whether those really are issues or just personal stylistic choices.

I’m a user of both.

> They can help highlight issues and it’s up to you to decide whether those really are issues or just personal stylistic choices.

That's a great way to frame it. I find Grammarly useful, but grammar checkers will never be (human) language linters.

> Even a master of lean writing (Hemingway himself) knew when to bulk up, even for just a moment, to create a cadence that could surprise and intrigue us.

There are other considerations too beyond just sound. E.g. recently someone (helpfully) pointed out to me that I had used the word 'super' as a filler word 20+ times in one essay. Which is good to be aware of, and I got rid of some of them. But at the same time, in most of the cases the reason I had done it is because if you have two long and complicated words next to each other, just visually it's difficult to read them.

In the same way that whitespace is necessary in between paragraphs in order to make text readable, you also need horizontal whitespace to prevent the words from running together and the meaning getting lost, and to give people time to digest complicated ideas.

> if you have two long and complicated words next to each other, just visually it's difficult to read them.

So, you insert "super" between any two long and complicated words, and that fixes it? The meaning is no longer lost, and people have time to digest the complicated ideas?

What's an example of that?

> So, you insert "super" between any two long and complicated words, and that fixes it?

In the case of "super" specifically, the issue is more that there's a short word that I want to emphasize that would normally get drowned out by longer words surrounding it. So the fix would be writing something like "super easy" instead of just "easy."

It's hard to give a good example because it's dependent on the typography. I usually write my drafts in a different typeface than I publish them in, which then forces me to do a final round of editing once they're in the CMS.

What type of writing are you doing that using “super” in this manner is acceptable? It feels so tacky to me...

It seems far more appropriate for conversational use (or dialog).

Thank you, Hemingway frequently used lengthy compound sentences to suggest rushed or immediate actions; critics compared it to cinematic story-telling techniques that were novel at the time.

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