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Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

hemingwayapp.com

61–70 of 335 posts

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#61
This is a very beautiful and logical interface, but it's the wrong approach, because it's a very developer-centric approach to writing.

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.

[1] http://imgur.com/k9hsHfj

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#62
post #35

I believe the logic behind HemingwayApp is misguided: 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 hat…

The passive voice has its place. But sentences in the form, "x is something that is y," are difficult to defend. Just write "Passive is important in good writing."

(Even worse: https://twitter.com/Graham_LRR/status/387778330054774784 )

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#63
I like the app and I think the easy to remember name suits it well, even if Hemingway might turn in his grave. It's a promising start, but I'm not sure if I'd continue to use it unless I could start tracking improvements in my writing.

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.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#66
post #46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not be able to force people to write well, but you can help them not write badly. That's the point of apps like this one - mediocre is better than bad. Once someone has improved their writing to the point where this app is no longer useful they can easily switch to something else. Writing is a skill that few people have really learnt to do well. For them, following some "random rules" will improve what they…

Forcing somebody to write short sentences wouldn't improve his writing.

Unless I missed something, this app doesn't force edits, it merely highlights things that writers should take a second look at.

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.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#67
It seems pretty useful as a tool for spotting the kind of linguistic howlers that tumble out on first draft. I can see this sort of thing becoming more valuable when more advanced Natural Language Programming APIs become available. It would be cool to see an attempt to encode Orwell's rules from Politics and the English language:

(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.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#68
post #18
post #5

You know what's fun? Pasting in text from Ernest Hemingway and seeing what he did wrong. 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…

I'd love there to be a proliferation of plugins for different writing styles. Hemmingway, Austin, Asimov, Wilde etc. Not so interested in "improving writing", more interested in achieving different aesthetics for different goals.

I agree! The Hemingway mode at seems to be geared (ironically) at technical writing. My English teacher wouldn't like it — it encourages simplification of language and minimization of word variation. Sometimes it's good to write like Austin...

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#69
I'm reminded of a story[1] I heard on NPR the other day. Researchers have drawn correlations between writing style and the eventual onset of Alzheimer's. Apparently nuns who had a habit of writing verbose, idea-dense sentences were less likely to develop Alzheimer's later on.

[1]: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1272118...

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#70
Professional writer here.

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.

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