Nice tool – of course, there are reasons and cases for using passive tense, long sentences, and adverbs. But being able to spot them so easily is certainly helpful when checking over manuscripts.
By the way, for German speakers, other than the famous Duden online check, there's a quite comprehensive checker that does check style as well here (although I'd argue it isn't all too helpful when it comes to correctly identifying style and comma rules!): http://rechtschreibpruefung24.de
/via +Danial Hallock
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Hemingway Helps Make You a Better Writer
This is simply brilliant…and so simple to use.
Just paste anything you've written into http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ and Hemingway highlights common mistakes that can make your writing less clear and concise.
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+Lason Strike I suppose we could all learn to write, the way AI learns too:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628945.700-storytelling-software-learns-how-to-tell-a-good-tale.html
But would the resulting stories have the same value?
Nope!
"I like the idea that language is a way of communicating thoughts and therefore any rules that alter the fidelity of the communication of thoughts is undesirable."
I'm confused. Shouldn't it be "…rules…are undesirable"?
Just to expound a bit on my previous comment… I don't like the idea of prescribed lengths for how long a sentence should be. A sentence "should" be as long or as short as it needs to be to express the thought the speaker is trying to express. If you arbitrarily decide the sentence is too long and should be shortened or too short and should be lengthened, then you are distorting the expression of the original thought. I like the idea that language is a way of communicating thoughts and therefore any rules that alter the fidelity of the communication of thoughts is undesirable.
It reminds me very much of how in programming there are people who say, "If you have a function longer than 200 lines, break it up into smaller functions." No, you write a function that's whatever length makes sense for whatever the function does. 2-line (or even 1-line) functions are ok, 200-line functions are ok, and 2,000-line functions are ok, as long as they express the underlying intent of the program correctly.
Anyway, long story short: I'm not a fan of arbitrary rules for how long/short sentences "should" be. (Or "dense and complicated" for that matter — I'm guessing this tool just counts attributes such as words per comma and so on to determine that — again what I prefer is using whatever "complexity" or "density" is appropriate for the underlying thought.)
+Lason Strike it should be "or superfluous detail".
Always reminds me of http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/46857.William_Safire 🙂
I need it not, for I am succinct to the point of terseness whenever I put pen to papyrus and my prose is free of unnecessary elaboration and superfluous detail.
Excellent word processor with style analysis and more for fiction authors: papyrus.de
Speak short sentences. Short is always better. Not.