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Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

hemingwayapp.com

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Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#201

Post by brokenparser »

hluska wrote: post #99
pmichaud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about pedantic snark (less/fewer), is that it loses its teeth when you're wrong. 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

While I don't think the proposed edit would help, the commenter isn't actually wrong - in modern usage, it is more correct to say "fewer corrections" than "less corrections." Language doesn't form in a vacuum, nor is its growth confined to dictionaries. Rather, language is a living, breathing thing and grammar is closer to history than mechanics. Consider the less v. fewer debate. Yes, several hundred years ago, it w…

Thanks! copy... paste...

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.)

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#202

Post by blaze33 »

pmichaud wrote: post #33
jawns wrote: 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…

The thing about pedantic snark (less/fewer), is that it loses its teeth when you're wrong. 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

Stephen Fry has an interesting take on the less/fewer debate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#203

Post by andrewliebchen »

jawns wrote: 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…

You're right. Though we can tell you didn't compose your comment in Hemingway. It characterizes one of your sentences as "hard to read," and another as "very hard to read."

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#204

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

tptacek wrote: post #152
hluska wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say. 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…

Something is either correct or it isn't, is the point. You might instead write "closer to correct", but, how clunky.

When it comes to diction, there are always a variety of choices. You make those decisions based on whichever word or phrase works best given the circumstances.

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.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#205

Post by jimmcslim »

jawns wrote: 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…

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

I was thinking about giving some Joyce a pass through this...

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#206

Post by DanBC »

imdsm wrote: post #156

Found a bug: type in "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" and watch the highlighting break.

Please edit this to include a line break, or include 4 spaces at the front of the line.

You've fucked page layout for mobile users.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#207

Post by diydsp »

ivansavz wrote: post #137
diydsp wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utilize has a rightful place in the English language. [1][2] 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…

> Utilize has a rightful place in the English language. [1][2] 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…

While the second reference was for Merriam-Webster, the first was for Oxford. So if you really want go against BOTH of those dictionaries AND english.stackexchange [1], you'll be making yourself deliberately obtuse. You might want to glance at the Cambridge American English Dictionary as well [2][3].

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/...

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#209

Post by Udo »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #106

Thanks for posting this! I've been struggling to write my first novel, and I'm interested to see how I score with this. 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 sen…

It's a tool explicitly designed for the dumbing-down of text. It might have its uses, for instance when you're writing ad copy, but applying it to everything you write would be a mistake.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#210

Post by deeteecee »

onion2k wrote: post #105
acqq wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says that the rules from the app are even right? Anybody acually eveluated them on real books by known good writers? I want statistics: how often good writers are outside promoted rules?

The rules in the app are Hemingway's rules from his book "On Writing". Lots of other authors have written similar books and generally they all agree on what works. 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." Ext…

I don't know anything about what Hemingway's rules are or what writers suggest in general. I can say, though, that during my AP English class, these are principles that we were taught in school for good writing. No doubt, you always take everything with a grain of salt so the writing doesn't have to be so rigid. But I find this app to be a great one, especially for people who want to improve and analyze their writing.
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