Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear
hemingwayapp.com
Great for testing your copy
hemingwayapp.com
But seriously, this is a nice, simple way to point out some general rules of thumb for improving writing, although I would love for it to be less proscriptive. Not every long sentence is a bad sentence, not every passive-voice sentence is a bad sentence, and not every adverb is a bad adverb.
Oh, and by the way, the copy editor in me can't help but notice that an app that's intended to help you improve your writing tells you to "Aim for 2 or less" adverbs, rather than "Aim for 2 or fewer."
Aside from Hemingway, it's fun to paste in other classic literature and see what the tool makes of it. It hated Lolita.
I didn't realize that writing at a 5th grade level was the pinnacle of writing.
What is with it's fear of adverbs?
Great writing rests on the foundation of bold verbs and nouns.
vs
When you use too many adverbs in your writing, you reduce a well-written piece to a confusing mass of words.
But when adverbs come up naturally in expressing an idea, I'd hate to suggest to anyone that it's a bad thing!
http://www.amazon.com/The-Stone-Cold-Truth-WWE/dp/1476751684
Seems like this kind of tool would be better for shorter pieces, say under 3K words or so.
It reminds me of advice I commonly get when I started writing: borrow a voice, and grow your own out from that. This is a great way to do that, I think -- it's internalizes the process and makes it a form of muscle memory. That sort of second-nature shit is invaluable to finding yourself. Yum yum yum.
20 of 20 sentences were too easy to read. Try combining all of your sentences into one page-long complex-compound sentence by overusing comma run-ons and semicolons and em-dashes and ellipses and strings of conjunctions.
[1] http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/hem_river.html
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1t9571/wp_so...
I really wanted to hate it, but couldn't.
This also violates current usage conventions for handling numbers in text.[1] Figures are only meant to be used in greater numbers (a rule of thumb is anything over 30, but I think I read that in a David Foster Wallace text, fwiw) with more complex verbal / textual representations - that is, not "two".
Even if you go in for prescriptive grammar, less and fewer were never strictly divided. The distinction actually came to us through one Mr. Baker's expressed preference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage
But can we really trust this guy for historical precedent? He burnt the cakes!
Maybe he was gluten intolerant.
Some discussion:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001702.h...
Consider the less v. fewer debate. Yes, several hundred years ago, it was just fine to say "less corrections." However, for whatever reason, the upper crust decided that "fewer corrections" both looked and sounded better. Consequently, "less corrections" evolved to be less correct. My inner smartass wanted to say "fewer correct", but that would be a silly joke.
It's like Russian. If you speak French, you can understand many Russian words. This isn't because French and Russian are linguistic cousins. Rather, it's because French was the language of nobility and words trickled down.
Or heck, we could talk about the word "you." You was originally formal, whereas "thou" was more relaxed and informal. Yet, today, if I started a comment on Hacker News with, "I fear thou are wrong", it would seem needlessly formal.
To conclude this long mess (it was supposed to be four lines and turned into paragraphs), language evolves constantly. Though certain distinctions didn't exist in earlier English, they exist now. However, if you know much about the history and formation of English, you should be less pedantic. It should also make us much more tolerant of people for whom English isn't their native language. We speak an intensely complex language with random rules that apply in some cases and not others.
Thank heavens we don't have to compile our language before we speak it...:)
When something was both not historically incorrect, and not considered incorrect by many current people, the arguments people make about it being wrong starts to crumble slightly.
Language is the same. If your goal is to communicate, the most easily understood choice is best. Some grammatical quirks do nothing to hinder comprehension and don't need to be pointed out (ie - less/fewer). Others are far more toxic.
Whether "less [count-noun]" is acceptable depends on granularity: "less than two adverbs" is acceptable whenever it feels alright to you to just abstract adverbs into a pure number. "less than two corrections" is not acceptable to most people because corrections don't lend themselves to being abstracted into a number.
Languages are not random. It's just that prescriptivist get hung up on random subsets of language and pretend they've seen all of it.
If you're specifically talking about my use of "more correct", let me try another example of why I think "more correct" is useful nonsense. I'm Canadian. Therefore, I use spellings like "colour" and "honour".
However, if I'm writing something primarily targeted to Americans, I switch to honor and color. It isn't that colour becomes incorrect when I write for an American audience. To me, color is always wrong. But, if I want to influence an American audience, color will be the correct spelling they're looking for.
When I'm obsessing over edits, especially when underlying rules are unclear (or non-existent), shades of correctness are the best metric I can find. Do you have another?
You might instead write "closer to correct", but, how clunky.
If you are building truth tables, then something is either correct or it isn't. But that's certainly not the case when using words to communicate ideas between humans.
After all, haven't each of us taken a multiple choice test with instructions to choose the most correct answer?
It's no different than choosing the most appropriate programming language for a given project; plenty will work, but ultimately one is the most logical given who will be writing it, reading it, using it, maintaining it, deploying it, etc.
Meanwhile, you can assign a mathematical measure of partial correctness for, say, sets of statements, simply as the fraction of correct statements over the total. In linguistics, you can assign measures to both acceptibility and correctness simultaneously by taking the fraction of people who "accept" a construct as "correct".
I'm not even sure how many levels of meta I'm at, so I'm done.
Correct \Cor*rect"\ (k[^o]r*r[e^]kt"), a.
[L. correctus, p. p. of corrigere to make straight,
to correct; cor- + regere to lead straight: cf. F.
correct. See {Regular}, {Right}, and cf. {Escort}.]
Set right, or made straight; hence, conformable to
truth, rectitude, or propriety, or to a just standard;
not faulty or imperfect; free from error; as, correct
behavior; correct views.
[1913 Webster]
Always use the most correct editions.
--Felton.
"Which is more correct? This or that?"
There's even "most correct" as in "it is most correct to choose..."
This is due to the simple fact that in many non-trivial fields, correctness is not absolute and thus multiple correct choices or outcomes are valid. Local preferences might recognize this, but prefer one over the other. In noun usage, this is a carryover from verb usage
"My shoes were mostly corrected by the cobbler." is perfectly fine, so users of English also find that "The fit of my shoes is mostly correct." is also perfectly valid usage.
More examples:
Which partial phrase emphasizes, and persuades better a point better (as a matter of rhetoric)?
"It is most correct to take this option."
"It is a preference to take this option."
Of course the former is stronger than the latter.
"correct" clearly grades.
And the results are in: http://i.imgur.com/6KMvhIa.png
(It appears that this comment itself is only good enough when I include this sentence.)
The thing about pedantic snark is that, whether it is right or wrong in its details, it almost always comes from a place of hostility and is thus a form of assholery. It indicates the individual "values" good grammar or whatever a helluva lot more than they value respect or politeness.
They did a great job, it's a nice app.
Sometimes I saw very good comments which are very long but informative. It takes us time to compose and read, but that's more valuable than short sentences.
What is a better way for communication?
I was thinking about giving some Joyce a pass through this...
9 of 46 sentences are hard to read. 19 of 46 sentences are very hard to read. 12 adverbs. Aim for 11 or less. 8 words or phrases can be simpler. 12 uses of passive voice. Aim for 9 or less.
All the cases listed here: http://writing-style-guide.papercheck.com/~paperch1/index.ph...
(And yes, I used the app to make sure to write this with passing marks.)
Hemingway the writer actually wrote long sentences and they were actually important in his writing.
Passive is also important in good writing.
You can't use machine metrics to force "good writing" you can only enforce mediocrity and the following some random rules "because the rules have to be followed."
Likewise, I as a writer of the software would absolutely hate to run some program to tell me "this function has more than 10 lines" or whatever. If I wrote 500 lines function it doesn't mean it shouldn't be that long: there are examples where exactly such functions are still necessary and good. Such automatic evaluations are for managers who probably don't understand what they enforce. Pointy-haired bosses, if you will.
So I see HemingwayApp as the pointy-haired-editor app.
(Edit: Improving the text based on the human input, thanks Agathos!)
note: most programming syntax style applications have the ability to selectively highlight special cases to flag sections of code to ignore particular errors.
Writing is a skill that few people have really learnt to do well. For them, following some "random rules" will improve what they write.
Regarding writing 500 line functions in code: very occasionally you need that, but there's nothing wrong with an IDE that points it out and asks if it's really a good idea, and for new developers who would do that sort of thing all the damn time it'd be very useful in improving what they come up with.
Learn the rules first, then learn when they don't apply.
Showing someone overly long and complex sentences, and pointing out examples of passive voice could only improve an editing process. Once you manually point out problems, the burden to change/leave as is falls onto the writer.
That said, a good writer will know when using a long sentence is the right choice for emphasis. And there's no way this program could ever develop that level of good judgement. This program isn't good for writers. It's good for non writers who want to quickly improve their shitty writing without effort.
Good writing is sensitive to multiple contexts and multiple rules. Essentially, one has to be able to shift-gears and notice the results of your writing, how your audience will receive it.
The only way a person becomes a good writer is through self-direct study. A bad writer who writes long sentences without noticing the results will remain a bad writer if someone forces them to divide their sentences, because they are still not being aware of the results of their writing.
All that said, a lot of people learning to write create long sentences because they don't yet have the skill to communicate with shorter sentences. Demanding that a person break up their sentences into smaller chunks can help them become more skillful - if they put in the effort to learn this.
See, I don't think the above is any better as two sentences, and I think it works better as one. Perhaps I just don't like starting sentences with "So".
Personally what I need is an extension or scriptlet that embeds this into an arbitrary text box. I've struggled with adverbs in my writing. I am less worried about Hemingway about longer sentences or the use of a larger vocabulary since I'm generally writing for an audience other than the general public, though. Perhaps some tuning parameters would be nice.
I guess personally I'm a bit put off by the UI. I'm reminded of a scene in the recent movie Her, where the AI offered some suggestions but only after being explicitly asked to do so. In HemingwayApp, the immediate red/yellow highlight will nudge the user into fixing the paragraph, whereas a more subtle colour and/or style might allow him more space to think "the computer is wrong this time, I like it more the way it is".
(I really, really hope you don't get down-voted from those who miss the point).
I hope this was meant as provocation. I'm guessing you actually meant, "Try to aim for two or fewer," yes?
As humour goes, it's a few levels of indirection away from Seinfeld. But you're on a forum full of people who spend all day thinking of abstractions for their abstractions, so what do you expect?
Okay, that made my day. :)
(Even worse: https://twitter.com/Graham_LRR/status/387778330054774784 )
I have not seen it established that passive constructions - where they are appropriate - are harder to use correctly or well. I have seen it asserted countless times, usually by people who don't know their passive from a hole in the ground and always without accompanying data.
Hemingway occasionally wrote long sentences and they proved more power because of their scarcity. The passive voice is occasionally important in good writing but bad writers use it too much. Most of the time they don't even realize it.
An app like this isn't about enforcing a standard rigidly, it's about showing an author the places in text that break general rules. It's making an author aware of the issue, not saying "Don't ever do this". In fact, the "rules" are defined as "Try to do X or fewer". The rules don't have to be followed but if you can't even recognize the rules, you have no idea when you should break them for effect.
From your example, somewhere along the way, someone taught you that long functions are GENERALLY bad (just like adverbs). That doesn't mean they are always bad (just like adverbs). This app doesn't provide an automatic condemnation of breaking the rules. It allows you to know what the rules are and how well you are following them.
Henry Miller and Stephen King have both written books on the subject, and both called their books "On Writing". E.M. Forster wrote one called "Aspects of the Novel". King actually goes further, to the point of saying things like "Don't use adjectives." Extreme for most written work but if you want to get your audience to use their imagination less direction is often better.
Short answer is that you should pardon my language, but English is fucked. So fucked that those of us native speakers should apologize for the state of our language. Not only is English constantly evolving (in different ways, in different English speaking countries), but the limited 'rules' are contradictory.
So, to answer your question about stats, we could take 10,000 English experts and lock them in a room until they write the English spec. In actual practice, they would die before they would ever agree on a set of rules. And then, even if they did come out with a spec, most famous writers would violate the spec at certain times.
But the assumption that short sentences are better than long sentences, or that simple sentences are better than complex sentences is just wrong. There are all kinds of reasons why you might use one type of sentence over the other or vary them for effect. You might be concerned about rhythm, or you might be attempting to establish a certain tone, distance, closeness, formality, or lack of.
We have this weird cultural obsession with the clarity, brevity, and simpleness of writing. Jacques Barzun even wrote a writing manual called Simple and Direct, as if these are the only virtues to be found in writing.
But I think you want as many tools as possible to achieve the effects you want. There is a huge rich tradition here, that we've largely lost, a tradition that teaches about hypotactic and paratactic sentences, that teaches about periodic and loose sentences, that teaches how to make left and right branching sentences, that teaches subordination, that teaches rhetorical devices, and that advocates (at times) longer, more complex sentences for richer and denser writing.
Thankfully there are a number of books out (some of them) recently that seem to be fighting back against the austerity view of writing.
They include, if you're interested: - Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences - Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence - Virginia Tufte, Artful Sentences, Syntax as Style - Richard Lanham, Analyzing Prose
I'd just add, there is nothing wrong with being simple and clear. There is nothing wrong with cutting out needless or weak adverbs. But there is something wrong with worshiping the austerity style as, at all times, the best and the only way to go. There are lots and lots of reasons and occasions to deviate from it, but the style orthodoxy these days is the one assumed by that (admittedly cool) website.
I've been jonesing for a real-time style editor for years. Autocorrect is fine and dandy (and often wrong, but that's another story). But most autocorrect systems limit themselves to spelling and grammar. Hemingway selects for readability. That's very cool and very useful.
That said, I'm probably not going to copy & paste everything I write into the Hemingway editing environment. I'd love plug-ins and APIs for Word, Google Docs, etc. If you make these, I will use them, and I will bug the living shit out of every writer I know to do the same.
But I want to much more!
* Measure for consistent voicing
* Apply arbitrary-ish user supplied rules
* Analyze grammar in sentence structure
It would be nice to have a tool that detects such things, but for the moment, a detailed editing pass is a good idea. I always edit what I write, indeed most of the time I'm writing and editing in parallel.
> But I want to much more!
I'm more than a little worried that, because of AI advances, automated methods will finally (and undesirably) hide the "voice" of the text's originator.
But for a lot of writing this is a good thing, having cohesive writing trumps losing the voice. It isn't fiction that I think these tools will be useful or desirable for, it is the mountains of technical writing we are drowning in.
More troubling is the use of automated writing tools for propaganda and psyops.
Serious and professional writers generally write for two things: clarity and insight. Stylistic preferences shouldn't stamp out a writer's ability to make a good point. They should help him express that point more clearly. That's usually to the writer's (and readers') advantage.
Writers who break the rules, and who know what they're doing, are fine. Most rule-breakers don't know what they're doing, however. For every David Foster Wallace, there are a thousand writers who aren't aware they're hard for most people to read.
"The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively (only) about English literature. (Sentence hard to read) Certainly (Adverb) schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes (Forms, makes up) a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens. (Sentence very hard to read).
This is given a "readability" score of grade 14, which I suppose means it can only be deciphered by college sophomores or above.
I wondered how it would read after being rewritten to achieve a perfect score in the site, so I took a stab at it:
"In school students write essays about English literature. But real essays can be about many more things. Schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. All over the country students are not writing about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees. They are not writing about the role of color in fashion. They are not writing about what makes a good dessert. They are writing about symbolism in Dickens."
The result brings me straight back to my days of taking standardized tests, where the test had a snippet of some essay, and was followed by questions on the topic. There was information in those snippets, but very little tone. It could be a bad attempt at my part, but while the information remains in my version, the tone is gone--I can no longer smell the air of Cambridge in that writing.
Thinking along those lines, has anyone put Jeff Atwood's writing into this thing? He's an extremely effective communicator to large tech audiences, and my guess is that he should have a more readable score on this thing than Paul would.
[1]http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-ha...
Anyway, great illustration both on how tweaking text can create contrasting changes, and how following "best practices" can be a bad thing. I suppose the original paragraph could actually be (slightly) improved by following some of the suggestions from the site, though. There's always room for improvement in any text.
Writing well takes years of practice. If you already write well, you won't need this program. You'll know the rules and the right times to break them.
But if you can't put in the time and effort to become a great writer, just using this program can improve your writing a lot.
I'm trying very hard to improve my writing at the moment and reading Zinsser's book. I understand what Zinsser is encouraging us all to do, but putting it in practise is over 30 years of un-learning that I need to do so it's not easy.
I'm glad that you said the tool is useful because i was having doubts about it after seeing the other comments. Im going to use it to assess my next blog post and see how things pan out.
Thanks for the tip.
[edit: Hemmingway himself has allegedly said "The first draft of anything is shit." -- but at least wikiquote has it as unsourced, so I'm not sure if the attribution is correct -- even if the idea probably is]
And I do believe that language capability is very important because it's the bridge between us and other people.
But the new trend is leading towards making everything simple and easy for everybody to absorb. It's even better to make it under college level. I don't quite agree with it. We should influence the next generation with excellent language expression more than simplifying it.
One more point is: if we need to publish our articles, better to use professional editors online to edit it. Proof reading or editing is always necessary for all the publications, like magazine and books, right?
Please kill 'utilize.' We should reach out to stakeholders and incentivize the sunsetting of the leveraging of the word 'utilize' from all slide decks.
Slide decks - the (not) new version of the tri-fold foam presentation board. It's the clear binder of our age.
Just because so many people misuse it, doesn't mean it should be ghettoized.
Remember a few days ago when an article suggested that we may be shaping our lives according to the capability of machines and there were many naysayers? People nixing a perfectly useful word because a machine can easily recognize is a perfect example of us accomodating our ways to the capabilities of machines.
[1] http://grammarpartyblog.com/2012/01/17/use-versus-utilize/ [2] http://writing.wikinut.com/Writing-Tip%3A-Use-and-Utilize-ar...
Neither of the these articles make a very strong point. Just because the Merriam-Webster felt this "use for unintended purpose" connotation doesn't mean it's true. I'm still of the opinion that "utilize" is completely useless---it is simply the French verb for "to use."
The use of "utilize" in English is a classic "wanting to be fancy by using the French word" syndrome.
Can you not loosen your grip on this opinion in the face of evidence? Is it clear to you that people make dictionaries so that we can communicate more efficiently, get more done, understand one another better and improve our experience on this planet, not to be fancy? I'm telling you this because in my dream, this is a website of people helping each other achieve the goals of their lives and details like this may help you, too. I enjoy it when people bring me fresh clarity. I'm not trying to beat you into a pulp until you agree with me.
[1] http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19811/using-utili... [2] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/... [3] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/...
Loving the comments here. As many of you pointed out, rules are meant to be broken. Our goal was to fix a simple problem: when you're looking at your own writing for too long, you start missing the simple, obvious errors.
You can follow me on Twitter @Adam_B_Long if you're interested in chatting about Hemingway with me.
This is definitely cool.
You may want to check this out, if you haven't seen it already:
http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voi...
The problem with writing is you can't loop through it and find whether each sentence passes or throws an exception. A written work needs to be evaluated as a cohesive whole. That's what "bold and clear" writing means to me: a written piece of work that stands on its own and says what it means.
Computers are not smart enough yet to understand why "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." is a complete, perfect paragraph. It doesn't have a verb and it looks like Lola is misspelled multiple times, so it doesn't pass the subset of grammar rules set up in the backend. But the meaning, the essence of the paragraph is clear.
Writing may someday be able to be governed by algorithms, but not yet. I ran the second paragraph of David Copperfield through Hemingway [1], and it gave me too many adverbs, a misspelling of the British neighbourhood, and the use of passive voice. This is understandable, as Charles Dickens was a verbose writer who got paid by the word. And yet, it doesn't detract from the fact that he is one of the most-loved in the English cannon.
We can't measure good literature yet, because there is no straightforward formula, and although this is an interesting attempt, it can't teach good writing better than a human.
For a better, and still technical, approach to understanding how and why sentences and paragraphs work with us or against us, it's better to read Strunk and White, and even better to read "How Fiction Works" by James Wood.
If there is a way to incorporate at least those two books into conditional statements, I would be excited to see it.
Eh, this isn't so infeasible. Any wide-coverage, statistical grammar will have a TOP --> NP production, as well as the usual TOP --> S. i.e. the grammar must accept NP-only sentences; they're too common to reject as mistakes.
I think it's reasonable to have a linter that throws a warning for that sort of sentence though. By all means dismiss them. But it can help you catch things you didn't intend.
You mean "canon" -- the root of "canonical".
One suggestion, make the price a slider from $0->$100 and instead of asking "Would you pay $5 for a desktop version of Hemingway? It would add the ability to save and open text files." ask "Please suggest a price for the desktop version"
This will give you a better idea of the true value of the application to people without being suggestive.
Awesome idea and implementation!
To that end, I wouldn't trust the data you would get if you asked people to state what they would be willing to pay. Self-reported data out of context is notoriously unreliable. Instead, really put it to the test. Tell people that you'll develop a desktop version if enough pledges are received, and ask people to make a binding pledge in advance. Give them a discount for jumping in early, of course, but use the average pledge as a guideline for final pricing.
If the median pledge amount is, say, $10, then you could probably assume that people would be willing to pay $15 once the product was actually available for download. (Those are made-up numbers, but you get the idea.)
It is useful for a writer to throw some text at it and see what you can learn. More feedback is almost always better for writers. The trick, is always, is having the judgement to incorporate intelligently.
For example, I stumbled onto a book about procedural content generation in games[1]. As a writer, game programmer, and dedicated fan of roguelikes, if this book were any farther up my alley, it would be banging against the back fence.
But, ugh, when I tried to read it, I just gave up after a few paragraphs. It's not gibberish, but it's almost physically painful to wring the actual information out of it.
And, indeed, when I throw some of those paragraphs at this app, I see:
Paragraphs: 1
Sentences: 31
Words: 833
Characters: 4196
11 of 31 sentences are hard to read.
11 of 31 sentences are very hard to read.
10 adverbs. Aim for 0 or less.
10 words or phrases can be simpler.
13 uses of passive voice. Aim for 6 or less.
[1]: http://pcgbook.com/
(The fact that they're adopting an academic tone doesn't help either, for that matter.)
Sure, being non-native doesn't help, but the world of academic writing has far, FAR bigger problems than that.
I find emacs very pleasing for writing text. I also use org-mode and it's LaTeX exporter extensively for publishing.
Now if only it could integrate with text-fields in my browser...
[0] http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voi...
I can map out my book chapters and sections in a typical tree. I use :noexport: for sub-trees in which I keep notes and errata. Since I use LaTeX I can give my documents some more direct formatting control using #+BEGIN_LATEX blocks (which I have found useful for adding a title page, controlling flow positioning of tables, etc). And I've written a little elisp to hook in some functions which run the texi2pdf program on my exported output automatically.
The nice thing is that I don't have to worry about typesetting until much later. I can just focus on the text, structure and flow. I can have my notes inline. It's really quite a nice setup.
But it's missing something.
If I'm to learn how to write clearer, I will need to use this more often.
Could they create an API and a chrome addon?
Ubiquity is the killer feature of any communication tool.
I write mostly in plain text and have developed a bunch of command line writing scripts to check readability, passive voice usage, and naming conventions, but I'm not sure how I could share this with my less tech-saavy friends.
Should the language tool be integrated into the editing interface or be an external service?
Assuming an external service, how should it be integrated with CMSes (wordpress/dokuwiki)? Should the source, normalized plain text, or HTML be sent to the language service for checking? Where do the corrections/edits happen?
As far as the business model is concerned, I'm not sure there is money to be made in this as a service to end users, but if this system is integrated as part of a complete workflow for edits/corrections some publishers and freelance editors might be willing to pay for this---not as the final check, but as a self-service "run this before you submit to me" requirement they give to authors to prune the low-hanging fruits.
The problem is that, in some cases, you need complex sentences , passive voice or adverbs. And that means that a perfectly fine article won't be pristine. I had a similar problem when facing syntax correctors that show a lot of warnings. Yes, they help you make less mistakes, but they also give falso positives, which can be distracting. I want to clean up and get to zero errors, after all.
So, this can reduce your writing to be "too conformant".
Man, writing is hard :_(
[1]: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272118...
"That's just ludicrous." vs "That's ludicrous."
Reads pretty much the same.
Another idea in sort of similar direction is doing automated link suggestions: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/automated-linking/
It might have to deal with markdown.
Looks like a great tool for me to take rambling blog drafts and trip them down while editing/refining.
However, it's wrong a lot of the time. I'd encourage you to add a little explanatory note for people less confident in their writing. Something about how no computer is a substitute, they should make the final decisions, etc. It'd also be great to have a feature where I could bless particular sentences. Good editors make useful suggestions, but they also know to let marginal things go if the author disagrees.
Also, two minor bugs: any paragraph after multiple blank lines gets entirely highlighted in red. And you shouldn't capture the control-tab keystroke and convert it into a tab character. Every time I try to leave that window, I end up mangling my text.
It, of course, improved conversion and it turns out there is already quite a bit of algorithmic work on the topic to help tune your ad copy.
So I am a believer in the hypothesis that simplicity and clarity, in marketing anyways, is a worthwhile pursuit.
I am going to test this Hemingway along the same lines - take some longer form copy, run it through and test output.
(1) http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/increasing-site...
Also, heads up that the site layout is not responsive: viewing at ~800px width places buttons all over the left side of the screen in an ugly way.
In good news, this app does a good job of handling complex sequences. Consider the sentence:
The quick, brown fox ran out of the clump of trees, saw us, got scared, and promptly ran back into hiding.
When I typed that, I expected it to turn red, but it didn't. Great job!
However, there is a problem with identifying adverbs. Consider the sentence, "He is a burly man." In this case, though burly ends with -ly (like adverbs), it is an adjective.
I wrote a book chapter recently -- as a last minute favor for a friend, and gratis. I did my best to make the words sing -- the subject's a yawner for most people, and I had to entertain myself while writing the thing. In addition to sly references to whatever caught my fancy that day, I quite deliberately used contractions all through. More music in 'em I reckoned and they scanned better. Some genius editor sent a markup back all de-contracted and I had to spend a day adding them back in. Cursing.
It is really, really hard to write well precisely because so much depends on context. It's true in professional writing too -- you have to keep your audience in mind. True that adjectives are less persuasive, usually, than facts stated slyly, but see how those sibilants sounds aloud? Maybe it's my taste and not yours, but maybe that's the point of a hemmingwayapp -- you could always joyceify it or send it throughout iambify.com and set it to my wild irish rose.
I'm sure Stanislaw Lem's great piece the Electronic Bard has been posted in the past but for those who don't know it and want the last word on wordsmithing machina, check it -- goo.gl/zZD0pX . Warning -- don't read this while drinking anything or you will risk snorting soda pop out your nose.
Here is text I more or less randomly chose from MOMA's site. Almost all of it is graded as "very hard to read".
Where is the cutting edge of the motion picture? Discover it first at MoMA. Building upon the Museum's long tradition of exploring cinematic experimentation, Modern Mondays is a showcase for innovation on screen. Engage with contemporary filmmakers and moving image artists, and rediscover landmark works that changed the way we experience film and media.
Any edit I make to that paragraph that makes the app happy seems to diminish the text.
In contrast, my first paragraph is graded better than the MOMA text, yet I think it is worse. The one thing it did complain about were the adverbs 'similarly' and 'perfectly'. The former is required to draw the comparison; the second is perhaps redundant, but I am emphasizing to make a point - redundancy is as much a tool in writing as it is a crutch or error.
I'm not saying the app is useless, just take the output with a huge grain of salt. Heck, if I paste text from Hemingway it is a sea of red and yellow.
--- I've always been impressed by Hemingway's writing style. Those long, rolling, complicated sentences transported me to a world where old men still fish; children care about the elderly, and the justice of the universe stands strong against agism. Every dog has his day.
I remember enjoying a long bath on a five-star hotel on the beach in LA, a huge bath, replete with a copy of "The Old Man and the Sea" and a little yellow rubber duck. It was then that I learned that my english teacher from years gone by was wrong. Long complicated sentences have their place in the literary world, it's just that they're not for everyone. Like this app.
Some people love Hemingway, and others don't. I happen to love the writer, but an App that highlights beautifully complex sentences that require your full attention to understand: I'm not so sure about. Somebody once said something famous about judging, and that it's not the greatest thing to do. Nixon said that it's better to stand firm on principle and bend like a reed when it comes to matters of taste.
For me, Hemmingway is a matter of taste.
----
This is how I scored in this fun game ;-)
2 of 12 sentences are hard to read. 1 of 12 sentences are very hard to read. 1 adverbs. Aim for 1 or fewer. 1 words or phrases can be simpler. 1 uses of passive voice. Aim for 2 or fewer.
Interesting.
I also try to write my code using this style. In fact, code and documentation and email should be:
1. As short as possible: Less words mean less stuff to maintain and comprehend.
2. Simple: The goal in business is to communicate well. Not to impress. And if I haven't communicated clearly, maintaining that code is going to be hard for the next person who has to read it.
From their JS:
readinglvl = getReadingLevel(paragraphs, sentences, words, chars);
[..]
function getReadingLevel (p, s, w, c) {
var r = Math.round((4.75 * (c / w)) + (0.5 * (w / s)) - 21.43);
return r;
}
(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. (https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)
I find it quite surprising that detection of cliches and needless multiple-negatives are not common features of word processing software.
One thing though, I don't want another text editor. This is a feature, not an app, and I want this to integrate into my existing workflow. I don't know if that is a web service for integration with popular editors, integration with things like Editorially, or something else, but I really don't want to open yet another app to edit things.
However it leaves one massive problem. If this is the 'one true way' or writing fiction, so to speak, then nobody else can really embrace it because they'll be dismissed as Hemingway wannabes.
I'm not sure that I'll remember to come back and look for it.
I would love to see a bit more of the hard data behind the rankings. For example, I just tested a blog article I wrote 5 minutes ago against an article written by a proper journo on PandoDaily and I scored higher. Does that make me a better writer? I hope not.
In all seriousness, the idea has a lot of potential and you could certainly find a few nice ways to compare yourself different writing styles of famous authors Hemingway or someone else.
I grew up in a bilingual home. My mom is a German immigrant who spoke no English when she met my American father. So in spite of having a good education and getting high praise for the content I produce, I find that I often write in "Germish." I need help with spelling, punctuation and grammar. The technical aspect of my writing is shockingly only fair to middlin' at best, sigh.
Spelling help is not hard to find but punctuation and grammar help is hard to find. So how helpful is it with that stuff? Because it looks like it focuses on tone or something, not basic grammar per se?
Thanks.
5 of 12 sentences are hard to read. 2 of 12 sentences are very hard to read. 2 adverbs (he should be aiming for "0 or less"). 0 words or phrases could be simpler*
*this "could be simpler" feature might be a bit ambitious. If you're confident in telling me that the entire text is essentially too complicated, it seems contradictory that at the same time none of it could be made more simple.
Of course, when you're writing, many times you break the rules. At times grammatically incorrect dialog, for instance, scans better. You might leave a subject off a sentence, make the reader hunt around for it. You might make some sentences difficult in order to contrast them with freely-flowing sentences in the space afterwards. You might create long, difficult-to-read sentences punctuated with short declarative ones.
Wonder how this tool is going to know any of that?
(*: number made up because I can't be bothered to look it up.)
Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is so complicated that your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering logic. Try editing this sentence to remove the red.
Adverbs are blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can use a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
Phrases in green show passive voice.
Paste in something you're working on and edit away. Or, click the Write button to compose something new.
Pretty cool, might use it as a quick checkup tool, would pay the 5$. Any word on what happens to the pasted text? I can't find any terms of use.
Could be really useful if you could change the rating rules. I'd like to adapt it to academic texts for example. There's some use beyond style as well since you could automatically check for superlatives (or adjectives in general) and the like that are generally not wanted and some other typical constructs that should be avoided.
I struggle with correcting my use of passive voice and I wish there were suggestions.
For example, how would you rephrase this? "put some headphones on to reduce the odds of being interrupted by someone."
IANAEM (not an english major)
Actually, is your original even that bad? I though passive would be "Interruptions are reduced by you wearing headphones."
I couldn't stomach his writing style for an entire novel, so I ended up not finishing the book.
I would like to see someone make a similar website to guide you toward writing in the style of Charles Dickens.
[0] http://classicprose.com/ [1] http://video.mit.edu/watch/communicating-science-and-technol...
"This example will go unidentified as passive if you trust bad grammar-checking programs."
The problem is never the passive per se - it's unclear writing, period. Sometimes that involves passive voice.
Grade 10, Grade 6, Grade 11, Grade 14, Grade 14,
And copy and pasting the whole page gets me Grade 9 (and some serious bugs (http://i.imgur.com/U6sK1mM.png?1) which I think may have crashed my browser.)
"New" HN comments:
Grade 12, Grade 7, Grade 7, Grade 5, Grade 7,
And the whole page is Grade 8
My own comments apparently have a lot of unreadable sentences but they aren't that bad. (this comment is Grade 3! Yay.)
Also: I haven't read a whole lot of Hemingway, but when I did read him, I always thought he was much more versatile a writer than made out to be.
Remember that Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and many other writers began as newspaper reporters, where over time they learned to express complex stories with the fewest words.
I am wondering if it may be better and/or more profitable to license the Hemingway algorithm to be used in the dozens of writing applications via a Chrome/browser app initially I would suppose (starting with Google Docs up to Poetica, Penflip, Draft etc.)
The value proposition I assume is the suggestions and recommendation. Focusing on that instead of customer acquisition/user interface design for another writing app may be more rewarding.
Great job all the same.
Just a small note: looking at the source code almost made me look over my shoulder, there is about 30 different situations being reported to Google Analytics as events. The makers of this _really_ knows how you are using their product.
Of course, serious writers shouldn't model themselves after others. More specific areas would be the focus. Narrower subjects like technical writing might be promising, since they aren't particularly dependent on individuality in style.
However, as far as literature is concerned, I'd not be using it. The title is misleading in that respect. Something along the lines "simple", "clean", "focused" writing would be better.
BTW: I have to paste some page-sized sentences from Thomas Pynchon in there.
Shameless plug: Some time ago I authored a Sublime Text (2/3) plug-in that highlights use of passive voice and "weazel words" (i.e., words to use sparingly and words). To install from Package Control, just search for "Writing Style" :)
Anyone who is prepared to hand over money for something like this ideally wants it integrated into their current writing environment, be that Word, LibreOffice, Scrivener, Dark Room or whatever.
Plugins are the way to commercialise this (if that's at all possible).
An interesting bit from the wiki(1) on passive voice: "For example, despite Orwell's advice to avoid the passive, his Politics and the English Language (1946) employs passive voice for about 20 percent of its constructions."
As with anything, it's important to be aware of what you're doing. But back when I tutored people in writing, hard-and-fast rules like this resulted in awkward, contorted writing by scared students. For example, I once knew a very smart person who avoided predicate adjectives at all costs. I don't really blame him for confusing passive voice and predicate adjective. I even found cases where the Hemingway app confused the two. But it was too bad that he had been so thoroughly brainwashed against the passive. Though I kind of admired how he managed to avoid, for years of his life, what I think is an indispensable construction.
1 -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_passive_voice#Advice_in...
Now, unlike a style manual, Hemingway doesn't explain the reasoning behind rules, or permit breaking the rules in the right context. It's limiting, and won't produce beautiful writing. But I suspect it will have use for non-writers. I'm talking about people who write imcomprehensibly, and don't have any incentive to master the art of writing. Doctors, lawyers, and business executives come to mind. In my experience, people in these careers write like shit and don't have time to improve their writing. By adhering to these rules, they can improve their writing significantly without much effort. The result will still be somewhat awkward and contorted, but far less than what they would write otherwise (marketspeak / legalese).
The examples in the Hemmingway app are great examples of this. There is nothing wrong with the phrase "Phrases in green have been marked...". It is perfectly descriptive and reads quite naturally.
The passive voice is correct grammar. It is 100% properly constructed English. It's a matter of style. And while one should be aware of and able to manipulate their style, that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with any particular style.
Even long, frequently forking sentences are not wrong. They are just a form of style. Style is about conveying mood, and cannot be prohibited any more than the choice of words in the sentence can be prohibited.
Although I have to admit Hemingway's famous short short story (though possibly not his) gives me chills
"for sale, baby shoes, never worn"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing
EDIT: Forgot HN isn't Markdown.
"Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway shits on your long sentences. Fuck complexity.
Smack an adverb with blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can insert a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
The passive voice sucks."
- People who are interested in being a (good) writer get excited when they hear the name. The name suggests they might write well like Hemingway.
- The name is already familiar and impossible to forget.
- It creates a lot of controversy and discussion as seen in this thread!
I'd pay $ (5ish) for a couple of other ways to use this:
* a bookmarklet that allowed me to select text on my blog or on one of my github pages and analyze it * emacs integration * a command line tool that worked like ispell/aspell to help analyze things I've already written
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416
Don't use this. Just don't.
"Four score and seven years ago..." - the sentence is very hard to read.
"all men are created equal" and "we are engaged in a great civil war" - passive voice.
And so on...
The moral is that you should not trust an automatic tool to judge your writing style.
Any answers by English experts?
Clearly this program cannot be trusted absolutely.
$5 is a reasonable price (to me) for a minimal text editor with this feature, though I would prefer something meatier and more expensive along the likes of Scrivener.
I would love you forever.
Yours in gratitude,
You've fucked page layout for mobile users.
michael [at] mherman [dot] org
I'd like to propose the bobzimuta constant: The first 40% of any HN comments on a page can be skipped since they will likely only be pedantic circle-jerking.
f a i l
Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear.
Hemingway highlights long, complex sentences and common errors. If you see a yellow highlight, shorten the sentence or split it. If you see a red highlight, your sentence is dense and complicated. Your readers will get lost trying to follow its meandering, splitting logic. Try editing that sentence to remove the red.
Adverbs show in helpful blue. Get rid of them and pick verbs with force instead.
You can use a shorter word in place of a purple one. Mouse over it for hints.
Phrases marked in green show a passive voice.
Paste in something you're working on and edit away. Or, click the Write button to compose something new.
so app
such writing
better than mcirosoft word