<story><title>Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear</title><url>http://www.hemingwayapp.com/</url><text>Great for testing your copy</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>You know what&amp;#x27;s fun?  Pasting in text from Ernest Hemingway and seeing what he did wrong.&lt;p&gt;But seriously, this is a nice, simple way to point out some general rules of thumb for improving writing, although I would love for it to be less proscriptive.  Not every long sentence is a bad sentence, not every passive-voice sentence is a bad sentence, and not every adverb is a bad adverb.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and by the way, the copy editor in me can&amp;#x27;t help but notice that an app that&amp;#x27;s intended to help you improve your writing tells you to &amp;quot;Aim for 2 or less&amp;quot; adverbs, rather than &amp;quot;Aim for 2 or fewer.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pmichaud</author><text>The thing about pedantic snark (less&amp;#x2F;fewer), is that it loses its teeth when you&amp;#x27;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;Even if you go in for prescriptive grammar, less and fewer were never strictly divided. The distinction actually came to us through one Mr. Baker&amp;#x27;s expressed preference:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Fewer_vs._less#Historical_usage&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Hemingway makes your writing bold and clear</title><url>http://www.hemingwayapp.com/</url><text>Great for testing your copy</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>You know what&amp;#x27;s fun?  Pasting in text from Ernest Hemingway and seeing what he did wrong.&lt;p&gt;But seriously, this is a nice, simple way to point out some general rules of thumb for improving writing, although I would love for it to be less proscriptive.  Not every long sentence is a bad sentence, not every passive-voice sentence is a bad sentence, and not every adverb is a bad adverb.&lt;p&gt;Oh, and by the way, the copy editor in me can&amp;#x27;t help but notice that an app that&amp;#x27;s intended to help you improve your writing tells you to &amp;quot;Aim for 2 or less&amp;quot; adverbs, rather than &amp;quot;Aim for 2 or fewer.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hissworks</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt; Aim for 2 or fewer.&lt;p&gt;This also violates current usage conventions for handling numbers in text.[1] Figures are only meant to be used in greater numbers (a rule of thumb is anything over 30, but I think I read that in a David Foster Wallace text, fwiw) with more complex verbal &amp;#x2F; textual representations - that is, not &amp;quot;two&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/593/01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;owl.english.purdue.edu&amp;#x2F;owl&amp;#x2F;resource&amp;#x2F;593&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>