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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

#261

Post by ScottBurson »

jordan0day wrote: post #134
hissworks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Aim for 2 or fewer. 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". [1] https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/593/01/

Yeah the harping on "fewer" vs. "less" and completely ignoring the "2" bothered me too. In my time as a newspaper writer (long ago), the general rule of thumb we used was once you hit 13, switch to numbers. Of course, newspapers have different priorities regarding space, so I could understand if this rule is different for other forms of writing.

I recall reading somewhere the phrase "nine or 10". Clearly the writer (or editor) was adhering rather mindlessly to the house rule.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#263

Post by ScottBurson »

piyush_soni wrote: post #258

That's good and helpful, but I don't know why it would suggest me to replace "All of" to "All" in this simple sentence below: "All of you please stand up. " Any answers by English experts?

I agree, that's a strange suggestion.

Clearly this program cannot be trusted absolutely.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#264

Post by ScottBurson »

vkb wrote: post #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…

> one of the most-loved in the English cannon

You mean "canon" -- the root of "canonical".

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#265

Post by bennyg »

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.

Guys -- use whatever the fuck you'd like.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#266

Post by Trindaz »

This might help bloggers write copy, but it's definitely not good for writers. The first paragraph of Chapter 1 of Robert Hughes' Shock of the New has these stats according to Hemingway:

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.

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