Introduction
Ernest Hemingway is known for his simple, direct, and sharp writing style. He was a master of short sentences. Hemingway Editor is a web and desktop application that helps writers focus on what matters and cut the rest. It breaks down long sentences and makes passive voice active. Although Hemingway is a writing app, it does not compare to applications like Final Draft or Scrivener, which are considered tools for storing and organizing your writing, not improving it. Hemingway is more similar to the writing enhancement app Grammarly. Like Grammarly, you must be skilled at choosing which suggestions Hemingway offers to accept or ignore. It is a useful tool if you need specific suggestions on how to improve your writing, and we like that there is a free version, although the paid option gives you more.
How much does Hemingway Editor cost?
The Hemingway Editor is free to use, but only in the browser, where it highlights dense sentences and other issues. The Plus plan, which is also browser-only, uses artificial intelligence to suggest rephrasing for the types of sentences that the free version only points out, costing $10 per month or $100 per year. This subscription includes 5000 monthly credits. Each credit is used for rephrasing one suggested sentence. Long content uses more credits, so be cautious. There is a two-week free trial with up to 200 sentence corrections, which I appreciate.
The desktop app for Mac or Windows costs $19.99. One benefit of the desktop app is that you can publish content directly to WordPress or Medium. You also need the app to export files to HTML, Markdown, or even PDF or Microsoft Word format. The desktop app can also save your writings, which the browser versions cannot do (I will discuss this later). If you don’t need these features, feel free to skip the desktop app. Just paste your writing into a different editor when you are done working in the Hemingway web app.
Unlike Grammarly, Hemingway does not have browser extensions or a mobile app. The Hemingway web app works on mobile browsers, but it is not optimized for smaller devices. Grammarly charges significantly higher fees for its paid plans, starting at $30 per month or $144 per year.
Getting started with Hemingway Editor
Using Hemingway is simple. When you open the editor, you start with sample text that Hemingway uses to showcase the app’s features. When you are ready to use the app, you can replace this sample text with your own. (Credit: Hemingway Editor / Gabriela Vatu)
Hemingway highlights your words and sentences in different colors based on its opinion. In the desktop app, blue indicates adverbs, with Hemingway advising that less is better. Green indicates the use of passive voice, while pink indicates phrases that could be edited to be simpler. Yellow indicates sentences that are hard to read, and brown indicates sentences that are very hard to read. Whether you choose to edit them or not is up to you.
Hemingway’s readability score
Your decisions affect the readability score. Hemingway prides itself on its readability level as no other application highlights it the same way. Basically, it analyzes text and determines the U.S. school grade level required to understand it, using a metric called the Automated Readability Index. The idea is to use this information to better tailor your text for your audience. To clarify, if you have text with a readability score of 7, for example, it does not mean you are targeting teenagers; it just means someone needs at least a seventh-grade education to understand your writing.
Considered
Reading scores are very common in WordPress and other similar platforms. For example, Grammarly also has a readability score. Grammarly’s scores are more complex, as they take into account the number of words and vocabulary used, which the automatic readability index does not do. Grammarly’s scores are more detailed, helping you refine your text better by shortening sentences or introducing more unique words.
Microsoft has a similar feature built into some Microsoft 365 applications. Using the Flesch-Kincaid grade level test, Microsoft Word assigns a score to each document after analyzing the sentence length and average number of syllables per word. The lower the score, the easier it is to read.
Formatting Tools
The Hemingway editor has various formatting elements. You can highlight text in bold or italics, insert H1, H2, and H3 headings, add quotes and exclamation points, and insert links. If you’re using the desktop application, you can download the text with all HTML headings.
Formatting options are not something extraordinary, as every text editor outside of Notepad has these options. However, they can be useful. In fact, the formatting toolbar in the free Hemingway is more accessible than the dropdown menu provided with the Plus version of the service.
Writing and Editing in Hemingway
One thing I love about Hemingway is that it allows you to write your text without distractions. The only thing you have to do to push away distractions is to select the “Writing” tab instead of the “Editing” tab. In the “Writing” tab, you have your focused text and a floating bar at the top with formatting options like bold text, H2 headings, or exclamation points. You don’t see any highlights in your text while writing.
You can write in the “Editing” tab, but you will see highlights added to your text while doing so, which can be distracting. However, every writer has their own requirements when it comes to text editors. While some need as little distraction as possible, others prefer to edit text while writing. Whatever your writing process is, the Hemingway editor can meet your needs.
When it’s time to edit, you switch to the “Editing” tab, which presents highlights on your text to indicate areas where you can improve. On the right, there’s the readability score, word count, and a tally of all the issues that the Hemingway editor found in your text. You can hover over the blue, green, and purple phrases to see Hemingway’s suggestions. If you want, you can even click the “Delete” button that appears to remove the word. You must handle the yellow and brown highlights yourself as that involves shortening sentences. It can be helpful to get an instant idea of the areas you can improve in your writing.
If you use WordPress or Google Docs a lot, you might find the word editor’s behavior uncomfortable when applying header formatting. After adding H2, the next line does not revert back to paragraph style automatically. You have to revert manually.
The platform does not support Markdown language, so you cannot quickly write codes, like enclosing a word in double asterisks to make it bold. If you prefer writing in Markdown, it can be annoying to have to use the mouse or keyboard shortcuts to apply basic formatting.
The Hemingway desktop application looks and behaves exactly like the free browser-based version. You get the same options to switch between writing and editing modes, and get the same formatting bar, etc. The only difference is that the desktop application allows you to import and export files and save your documents. (Credit: Hemingway Editor / Gabriella Fatou)
Editing
Hemingway AI: Success or Failure?
The Hemingway Editor ventures into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) with its Plus online release. When you pay for the Plus version, the Hemingway Editor can suggest corrections for up to 5000 sentences per month.
The Hemingway Plus Editor tells you what the problem is when you click on the highlighted sentence. In my case, the following sentence was highlighted for being long and complex: “While Hemingway is a writing application, it does not compare to applications like Final Draft or Scrivener, which are applications for storing and organizing your writing, not for enhancing it.”
The smart Plus editor offered to “fix” the sentence for me. It displays a window with the original phrase and the AI suggestion, along with a readability score. Hemingway Plus provided the following alternative: “Hemingway is a writing application, but it’s not as good as Final Draft or Scrivener. Those applications store and organize your writing, but they don’t enhance it.”
Although the rephrased paragraph might be easier to read, it is incorrect. In the original paragraph, I do not say, in any way, that Hemingway “is not good” like Final Draft or Scrivener.
Hemingway Plus also uses AI to offer recommendations tailored to improve the readability of your text to a target level you choose. Hemingway advises treating each highlight as a suggestion rather than a strict rule, and I can only agree with that.
You should keep one thing in mind when using Hemingway Plus: every time you click on a highlighted phrase and choose “Fix it for me,” you are using one of the credits in your account. It doesn’t matter whether you accept the change or not. Requesting another suggestion uses another credit.
While some suggestions simplify your ideas, others are unsatisfactory and waste your time and credits, as you can see above.
As with any other AI, it comes down to personal preferences whether you accept any changes or suggestions. When it comes to some typo or grammatical error, the decision to accept is quite clear. At other times, however, it’s about style. How do you want your text to read? AI can often strip away your personality, style, and voice.
As someone who has written for about half my life, I have developed a style – every writer does. Seeing the text become completely flat from AI suggestions leaves me puzzled. When asked to improve the paragraph above, Hemingway removed most of my voice from the text. Instead of “As with any other AI, it depends on personal preferences whether you accept any changes or suggestions,” Hemingway suggested I say “When it comes to AI, it’s up to you whether you want to accept changes or suggestions.” It’s a simple detail, but a significant one.
Could the text be more readable? Perhaps. Could it be more friendly for search engines? Definitely. Do we really need to lower the readability level this much? I believe readers are smarter than some programs think. I believe the reader’s ability to understand is greater than some algorithms assume.
Lack of Save Function in the Web Application
A major thing missing from both the free and paid web versions of the Hemingway Editor is the ability to save documents. Your text is not saved in the cloud or on your device. In the free version, if your browser crashes, you lose all your writing. Reloading the page also makes your text disappear forever. The Plus version at least remembers what you’ve written in case of browser reload or crash, but you still cannot save texts for later access.
The way
The only way to save a document is to have a desktop app costing $19.99. This is not ideal if you choose to subscribe to the service, although the desktop app does not use AI to help you proofread your text.
With Grammarly, all files are saved in your profile so you can easily access them at any time. The fact that you cannot organize the files in any way is a completely different matter and it’s one of my complaints about Grammarly.
If you like it, get the paid version
The paid Plus version of the AI-based Hemingway Editor is much better than the free version, thanks to its comprehensive suggestions. The free version is still useful as it points out areas of text that you can fix yourself, but getting additional help from AI can teach you a thing or two and save you some time. Hemingway Plus can be beneficial for certain types of writers, from students refining their style to authors who tend to complicate their paragraphs, to non-native speakers. While the desktop app adds the ability to save files, it lacks AI suggestions, which are the biggest attraction of the Hemingway Editor. As long as you can exercise some judgment in accepting and rejecting suggestions, the Hemingway Editor is a useful tool.
Source: https://me.pcmag.com/en/productivity/20843/hemingway-editor
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