Thinking about writing apps, here’s another one I’ve been leaning on of late: Hemingway.  Available as both a free website and a (paid) OS X app, this one comes in handy during the editing phase.

Paste in text, and Hemingway grades the readability of what you’ve written.  It highlights words, phrases and sentences that reduce comprehension.  It marks adverbs you might want to drop.  And it flags use of the passive voice.   All to help you make your writing more forceful and clear.

Left to my own devices, I tend to favor sentences built as overly-long, clause-filled constructions, those that wedge multiple thoughts together in a single, unnecessarily commingled whole.  Like that last sentence, for example. According to Hemingway: “very hard to read.”

So, after writing a shitty first draft, I next hop to Hemingway to slim things down.  Highlighted section by highlighted section, I tweak away.  Trimming the fat, subdividing messy sentences into clearer, shorter ones.  The result: better writing that’s far easier to understand.  And that makes a big difference.  Especially on screen, where comprehension is already reduced as compared to paper.  And on the web, where people scan as much as actually read.

Try it yourself.  And, while you’re at it, have a stiff drink.  It’s what Hemingway himself would want you to do.