Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning American writer, is famous for his writing efficiency. “To be successful in writing, use short sentences,” he said. The Hemingway Editor app is based on this premise.
Write Sweet and Short Prose like Hemingway
If you’ve been advised to write like Hemingway, it’s one way of telling you that your sentences are too clunky and could use some trimming.
Keeping the desirable quality of the brevity of Hemingway’s writing in mind, Adam and Ben Long developed a writing app that grades the readability of your writing from 1-15. The lower the rank, the clearer your writing.
How to Use the Hemingway Editor
The Hemingway Editor is very easy to use. You can paste or type text into it. The app uses color-coding to convey how complicated the sentence is. For instance, if there is a red highlight, the sentence is dense and it would be a good idea to work on it. A purple highlight indicates that a longer word can be replaced by a shorter one. A formatting toolbar is also provided.
In this example, the highlights focus on adverbs and the use of passive voice. Readability is also graded. You can use this app to assess your own content. A few tweaks based on the suggestions provided can clean up your copy.
Hemingway Editor: Recommended or Not?
Highly recommended tool.