Hemingway App. Review

I recently purchased the Hemingway App for $9.99 after coming across some good things about it on Pinterest. You can use the online version for free, but are able to purchase and download a version ont0 you computer. Those who purchase are guaranteed the latest version of the app and free upgrades in the future.

The app is rather self explanatory. You cut and paste in a section of your writing and the app will analyze it for you. It will automatically tell you the approximate grade level that you are writing at and give you a word count. The app looks at five different areas:

1) Sentences that are hard to read are highlighted in yellow

2) Sentences that are very hard to read are highlighted in red

3) Phrases with simpler alternatives are highlighted in light purple

4) Adverbs are light blue

5) The passive voice is light green

The last two categories try to eliminate the use of adverbs and the passive voice, but give you a number based on the size of the passage, like you have 5 out of 6 “recommended” adverbs. Depending on your writing style and content these last two points can be more or less helpful.

I found that many of my sentences were “very hard to read” and so I tried breaking them up and rearranging my thoughts. This worked to some extent, though in many cases I could only take them from red to yellow, “the hard to read” category. I was usually under on my passive voice and cut out enough adverbs to satisfy the app and myself.

I wish the app had more grammar functions, though it does allow you to replace some words with similar versions, it took the overall reading level of my excerpt from grade 9 to 6. I was not happy and not entirely sure what I did to make the change so I couldn’t undo it.

My only real problem with the app is with the size of the excerpt you can cut and paste. If the word count is too high it will slow down the app so much that it almost glitches. I ended up contacting the creatures to ask about fixing it and they said that all I could do was feed in smaller pieces to edit.  Breaking your writing up is no big hassle in a cut and paste environment, I would have just liked to plug in a whole chapter instead of having to cut it up into so many paragraphs. I found that highlighting the section that I was copying into the app was the best way of keeping track of where I was. I would just copy the editing version from the app and paste it back into my document, deleting the old highlighted section.

I have used different editing software in the past. While word doc provides some very good review and reference features for writers we need a bit more help. Grammarly is an add-on for word doc that I found very helpful, the only problem is that it can be rather expensive with a monthly or yearly subscription, the later being the cheaper route. Unfortunately, I was only able to afford one month at the time and used it to diligently edit several in progress rough drafts and fine-tune one manuscript.

I recommend trying the free version online and if you feel the need to purchase it is a more than reasonable price.

Try it now at www.hemingwayapp.com!

To my fellow writers, God bless and Write On!!!