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A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

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Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#41
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app is correct, both of those phrases are passive. Grammatically the passive voice uses the equative verb to be with a past participle of the verb. Both those phrases satisfy that condition. Semantically, the passive voice involves action being done to the subject. Both those phrases also meet that condition. Rearrange them and you'l see: [1] "I was exhuasted" --> "${SUBJECT} exhausted me". The phrase may not see…

> "${SUBJECT} exhausted me" I don't think that a correct analysis of the sentence. The exhausted is an adjective, similar to I am tired , but saying "Something tired me" would have a totally different meaning, because it's a different, unrelated sentence. ("I am covered in green paint." also doesn't seem like it's passive voice, but maybe I'm wrong.) As far as I can tell, "our work here is done" is indeed passive voi…

For those who won't read the whole thing, here's the relevant part regarding sentences like "I was exhausted":

> The term ‘adjectival passive’ is often applied (perhaps not very felicitously) to active clauses with predicative adjective phrases in which the adjective derives from the past participle of a verb and has a passive-like meaning. There is frequently an ambiguity between be passives and adjectival ones. For example, The door was locked is ambiguous: as a be passive it says that at a particular time someone took the action of locking the door, and as an adjectival passive it says that during some past time period the door was in its locked state. Since the complement in this kind of clause is an adjective phrase, verbs other than be can be used (The door seemed locked, as far as I could tell), and so can adjectives derived with the negative prefix un- (The island was uninhabited by humans).

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#42

In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits my needs. I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1]) requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that. More crippling than that, these editors don't support anyt…

Hemingway is actually pretty simple, I'm writing a library which implements something similar. "Grammarly" exists, but I think the suggestions are silly. This Foxtype editor is fancy, but Hemingway produces better results in practice. What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to be especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think of immediate cases where I can emb…

> What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to be especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think of immediate cases where I can embed it.

I think JavaScript is a pretty good start as that can be made into a browser plugin and a command line tool relatively simply.

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#43
post #19

This reminds me of the "Hemingway" app that failed Hemingway: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416 Can I also just point out that "I was exhausted." is not passive voice! And "Our work here is done." also shouldn't be highlighted, it's absolutely fine. What the hell? With these kinds of false positives, this seems like it would do more harm than good.

The app is correct, both of those phrases are passive. Grammatically the passive voice uses the equative verb to be with a past participle of the verb. Both those phrases satisfy that condition. Semantically, the passive voice involves action being done to the subject. Both those phrases also meet that condition. Rearrange them and you'l see: [1] "I was exhuasted" --> "${SUBJECT} exhausted me". The phrase may not see…

In "I was exhausted", it seems to me that the word "exhausted" is an adjective, and it's a simple past tense statement not different than saying, "I was sad."

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#44

I feel like every 4 or 5 years, everyone gets together and celebrates terse writing like it's some new insight.

No, people celebrate terse writing fairly non-stop. It may only intersect with your awareness every 4-5 years, but its not like it goes away in between.

Those writers who don't appreciate terse writing are too busy writing to celebrate.

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#45

In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits my needs. I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1]) requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that. More crippling than that, these editors don't support anyt…

Do any of this type of tool have an offline version or plugin that would work on Mac? I'd love to use one, but I can't use a web app for confidential information. I'd be happy to install a bundle in vim, Sublime Text, emacs, or whatever.

I use https://github.com/amperser/proselint with emacs fly check support + e-prime mode.

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#46
post #9

Is there no beauty in painting vivid pictures through colourful expression? Sure, being terse makes consumption faster and easier, but don't you trade that for the tool of directing the reader's imagination? I guess the skill is in being terse yet still descriptive?

The examples in this tool can be misleading, especially if you haven't read the classics like _The Elements of Style_ and _On Writing Well_. Ridding your writing of fluff is central to their teaching, but not at the expense of detail. "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines a…

Thank you! I was not aware of their existence.

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#47

In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits my needs. I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1]) requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that. More crippling than that, these editors don't support anyt…

For offline writing (e.g. emacs/vim), I've found textlint[1] to work really nicely, and fits well into a LaTeX+Makefile workflow.

[1] https://github.com/textlint/textlint

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#48
I’m an admirer of the writing of George Orwell so I thought it would be fitting to paste the first two paragraphs of his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language”.

It suggested removing a number of modifier phrases. These phrases were not redundant and removing them would result in loss of important detail, information and/or emphasis. In some cases removing those words would result in nonsensical or syntactically incorrect sentences. Further experimentation showed that it complained about “mostly” and “many” as modifiers but not “some”.

It highlighted a number of long noun phrases but none of these could be suitably shortened, and Orwell’s uses of the passive voice were mostly appropriate; re-phrasing these to be in the active voice would result in awkward prose. Its left branching sentences were not rambling at all.

On the plus side, I thought its highlighting of long sentences worked well but not all long sentences are difficult to parse and a succession of multiple short sentences can have an unnatural rhythm. It also failed to take into account that colons and semi-colons can be used to separate main clauses.

I wouldn’t use it myself, but I can see how it could be a useful tool for considering how a sentence can be rephrased and encouraging awareness of the issues it highlights.

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do any of this type of tool have an offline version or plugin that would work on Mac? I'd love to use one, but I can't use a web app for confidential information. I'd be happy to install a bundle in vim, Sublime Text, emacs, or whatever.

I use https://github.com/amperser/proselint with emacs fly check support + e-prime mode.

Ah, cool, thanks!

Re: A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive voice is merely a form of speech. It’s not blanket-wrong. It serves to diminish the actor, which can be a legitimate choice. “He was diagnosed with flu” is passive voice, and appropriate, because the diagnoser is not important. We care more about the flu than the doctor. “Mistakes were made” is evasive and serves to obscure, and should be avoided.

It also manages clean transitions when introducing new actors. The passive voice allows you to put the known at the beginning of a sentence and the new information nearer the end. Without the passive, each individual sentence may be objectively more felicitous, but there is a cognitive disconnection between them. It might even be worth pointing out that the "authoritative basis" for all of this passive prohibition is…

Oh, The Elements of Style even gets lot of stuff wrong. Their examples of `passive voice' aren't even all passive.
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