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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

#311

Post by oconnor0 »

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.

Einstein's theories about the universe are more correct than Newton's. Neither are "correct".

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#312

Post by Perceval »

mkrecny wrote: post #18
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…

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.

How about Faulkner?

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.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#313

Post by krmmalik »

kibibu wrote: post #294
krmmalik wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see the opinion of an actual professional writer rather than just someone with an opinion for the sake of it. 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 doub…

Can I ask which book in particular?

"On Writing Well".

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#314

Post by Perceval »

adam_b_long wrote: post #109

Hey guys, my name is Adam Long and my brother and I created Hemingway a few months ago! 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.

If you want to be even more advanced in your Hemingway analysis of text, you will want to have a feature that highlights long Latinate-root words and suggests short Germanic-root synonyms as replacements.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#315

Post by dengar007 »

buster wrote: post #310
dengar007 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great if there was some way to write Sublime / Vim / whatever plugins that use this.

Not if it uploads my texts to some 3rdparty webservice, though

Ya that's one thing I would like to avoid also.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#316

Post by Noxchi »

mhurron wrote: post #79
aroman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That's what I noticed. It seemed to mark your writing higher the lower the reading grade level it was targeted at. I didn't realize that writing at a 5th grade level was the pinnacle of writing. What is with it's fear of adverbs?

Well, what is the point of writing? Or communication in general?

Originally, it developed to transfer ideas from one mind to another, in the most intact way possible, while consuming the least amount of energy.

But academics and English teachers masturbated themselves a career by gradually applying arbitrarily rules on the use of words, and enforcing them on their students (hey, what else were they supposed to teach for 4 years?).

So writing no longer has the goal of transferring ideas from one mind to another, in the most intact way possible, while consuming the least amount of energy.

Instead it has arbitrary rules put on it, that require it to pass certain tests of style to get a passing mark from the teachers.

So academics in their ivory towers expect you to write in a way only they would understand, while copywriters who are rolling in dough who write ads to the common man, wouldn't let anything out that was above a "7th grade" level.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#318

Post by MaysonL »

hluska wrote: post #148
ajanuary wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'language is evolving' and 'language is defined by usage' arguments go both ways. 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.

It's kind of like A/B testing. A blue button isn't wrong, but a green button coverts better. 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.

However, grammatical quirks which don't hinder comprehension still act as signals of status. Using "less" where "fewer" is more correct, or vice versa, will definitely hinder acceptnce of the message by many, regardless of its comprehensibility.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#319

Post by MaysonL »

mkrecny wrote: post #18
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…

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.

To offer my own pedantic snark, Austin is the capital of Texas. Austen is the author's name.

Re: Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear

#320

Post by penguindev »

aymeric wrote: post #17

This is great. 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."

Wear headphones so you aren't interrupted. Wear headphones to reduce interruptions.

IANAEM (not an english major)

Actually, is your original even that bad? I though passive would be "Interruptions are reduced by you wearing headphones."

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