Opinion Columnist
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short,” wrote American novelist Ernest Hemingway in 1945. “The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
The creators of a new web and desktop app called “Hemingway” seem to have taken this mentality to heart.
Hemingway (the program, not the deceased writer) analyzes your prose and points out problem areas. Difficult-to-read sentences are highlighted in red and yellow, depending on severity. Adverbs are highlighted in blue. Overly complex words and phrases are highlighted in purple. Passive voice appears in green.
The program is not intended as an end-all-be-all authority on writing. After all, writing is one of the few jobs unlikely to be re-staffed by robots anytime soon. Rather, Hemingway works best as a tool to evaluate and revise your prose. In that respect, Hemingway is an exceedingly useful second set of eyes, blissfully unburdened by the pretentious attitudes that seem to be a prerequisite for English majors.
Eager to find out what the machine thought of my own work, I plugged in a trio of my favorite pieces. Hemingway promptly returned my query with page after page of rainbow-colored vomit.
The best way to demonstrate the usefulness of Hemingway, though, is to plug this column into it—and read the revised results below.
“It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short,” wrote Ernest Hemingway. “The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.”
The creators of a new web and desktop app, called “Hemingway” seem to have taken this mentality to heart.
Hemingway (the program, not the deceased writer) analyzes your prose and points out problems. It highlights difficult-to-read sentences in red and yellow, depending on severity. Adverbs become blue. Overly complex words and phrases turn purple. Passive voice appears in green.
The program is not intended as an end-all-be-all authority on writing. After all, writing is one of the few jobs unlikely to be re-staffed by robots anytime soon. Rather, Hemingway works best as a tool to check and revise your prose. Think of it as a useful second set of eyes unburdened by the pretentious attitudes of English majors.
Eager to find out what the machine thought of my own work, I plugged in a trio of my favorite pieces. Hemingway promptly returned my query with page after page of rainbow-colored vomit.
The best way to show the usefulness of Hemingway, though, is to plug this column into it – and read the revised results below.
★★★½
crclark2@mavs.coloradomesa.edu
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