<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>acqq</author><text>Forcing somebody to write short sentences wouldn&amp;#x27;t improve his writing.</text></item><item><author>onion2k</author><text>You might not be able to force people to write well, but you can help them not write badly. That&amp;#x27;s the point of apps like this one - mediocre is better than bad. Once someone has improved their writing to the point where this app is no longer useful they can easily switch to something else.&lt;p&gt;Writing is a skill that few people have really learnt to do well. For them, following some &amp;quot;random rules&amp;quot; &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; improve what they write.&lt;p&gt;Regarding writing 500 line functions in code: very occasionally you need that, but there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with an IDE that points it out and asks if it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; a good idea, and for new developers who would do that sort of thing all the damn time it&amp;#x27;d be very useful in improving what they come up with.&lt;p&gt;Learn the rules first, then learn when they don&amp;#x27;t apply.</text></item><item><author>acqq</author><text>I believe the logic behind HemingwayApp is misguided:&lt;p&gt;Hemingway the writer actually wrote long sentences and they were actually important in his writing.&lt;p&gt;Passive is also important in good writing.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t use machine metrics to force &amp;quot;good writing&amp;quot; you can only enforce mediocrity and the following some random rules &amp;quot;because the rules have to be followed.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, I as a writer of the software would absolutely hate to run some program to tell me &amp;quot;this function has more than 10 lines&amp;quot; or whatever. If I wrote 500 lines function it  doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be that long: there are examples where exactly such functions are still necessary and good. Such automatic evaluations are for managers who probably don&amp;#x27;t understand what they enforce. Pointy-haired bosses, if you will.&lt;p&gt;So I see HemingwayApp as the pointy-haired-editor app.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: Improving the text based on the human input, thanks Agathos!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>normloman</author><text>Yeah it does. Long sentences are harder to read. Bad writers write too many long sentences, and it makes their writing difficult to parse. So just forcing them to write shorter sentences will improve their writing a great deal.&lt;p&gt;That said, a good writer will know when using a long sentence is the right choice for emphasis. And there&amp;#x27;s no way this program could ever develop that level of good judgement. This program isn&amp;#x27;t good for writers. It&amp;#x27;s good for non writers who want to quickly improve their shitty writing without effort.</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>acqq</author><text>Forcing somebody to write short sentences wouldn&amp;#x27;t improve his writing.</text></item><item><author>onion2k</author><text>You might not be able to force people to write well, but you can help them not write badly. That&amp;#x27;s the point of apps like this one - mediocre is better than bad. Once someone has improved their writing to the point where this app is no longer useful they can easily switch to something else.&lt;p&gt;Writing is a skill that few people have really learnt to do well. For them, following some &amp;quot;random rules&amp;quot; &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; improve what they write.&lt;p&gt;Regarding writing 500 line functions in code: very occasionally you need that, but there&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with an IDE that points it out and asks if it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; a good idea, and for new developers who would do that sort of thing all the damn time it&amp;#x27;d be very useful in improving what they come up with.&lt;p&gt;Learn the rules first, then learn when they don&amp;#x27;t apply.</text></item><item><author>acqq</author><text>I believe the logic behind HemingwayApp is misguided:&lt;p&gt;Hemingway the writer actually wrote long sentences and they were actually important in his writing.&lt;p&gt;Passive is also important in good writing.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t use machine metrics to force &amp;quot;good writing&amp;quot; you can only enforce mediocrity and the following some random rules &amp;quot;because the rules have to be followed.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, I as a writer of the software would absolutely hate to run some program to tell me &amp;quot;this function has more than 10 lines&amp;quot; or whatever. If I wrote 500 lines function it  doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be that long: there are examples where exactly such functions are still necessary and good. Such automatic evaluations are for managers who probably don&amp;#x27;t understand what they enforce. Pointy-haired bosses, if you will.&lt;p&gt;So I see HemingwayApp as the pointy-haired-editor app.&lt;p&gt;(Edit: Improving the text based on the human input, thanks Agathos!)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jiggy2011</author><text>I find on average that it does, especially with less skilled writers.</text></comment>