The app not the chap: On Hemingway and writing
Hemingway is an app that checks your text for difficult sentences, adverbs, and passive voice. The new desktop version has just landed, and I'm testing it now.
The app highlights readability problems:
- hard sentences (yellow)
- very hard sentences (red)
- adverbs
- simplifiable phrases
- passive voice
If you strive for lean prose, having the problem areas flagged makes editing easier.
It ticks the minimal writing environment boxes. In Write mode, it's just you and your text. There’s Markdown support, live preview, and HTML export. And it has a nice icon, which matters more to Mac users than they'd care to admit.
But I won't be switching to Hemingway just yet. The app is buggy. On a newish iMac, scrolling lags. Misspelled word underlining can be in the wrong places.
Despite my system language being set to British English, Hemingway marks Britishisms as errors. And the licence agreement permits only one user on one machine.
Still, these are fixable problems. What interests me more is a criticism that can also be levelled at the web version: Hemingway can leave text a little limp.
Here's the famous opening of A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Hemingway app scores it at grade 58 — essentially unreadable. Add the 14 full stops Hemingway would like, and you get this:
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Light. It was the season of Darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to Heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
Grade 2. Much better.
Is it an improvement? No: Dickens was Dickens. But there isn’t a sub-editor alive today who wouldn’t punctuate the hell out of that sentence.
The edit doesn’t ruin the Dickens. It’s the same words in the same order. But it does drain its identity and its specialness.
The app assumes all long sentences are hard to read. I’m not expert on readability, but Dickens’ introduction isn't that hard to read.
Some adverbs are advisable. The passive voice is occasionally useful. Long sentences can be beautiful.
Its recommendations are perfect for utilitarian text — for which there are many uses. But for creative writing, handle with care. Let your instincts arbitrate.
Plain English doesn't have to be dull. But for the jobbing writer, Hemingway app isn't ready to be first-choice editor—not yet. And if creativity is high on your priority list, it may never be.