241–250 of 335 posts
I like this app. However, most of my work Latex based. If you had something like this for Sublime Text, I would buy it.
Does lots of written work in restructed text and would buy as well (a sublime text addon, for example)!
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.
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.
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…
Nice! I love good quality code: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-doubleup-obf.js
I especially like how easy you can guess the non-obfuscated version: http://www.hemingwayapp.com/js/hemingway-doubleup.js
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> One my biggest problems is word repetition sentence to sentence. 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…
> 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 auto…
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.