
A linguistics tool to help you simplify your writing - kamran20
https://foxtype.com/concise
======
kerkeslager
In theory this is a great idea, but not a single implementation I've seen fits
my needs.

I'm not going to use a writing tool that requires me to change my entire
workflow. This (and every other tool I've seen that does something similar[1])
requires me to use their editor. If I want to do something like edit a comment
on HN, it requires copy/paste to do that.

More crippling than that, these editors don't support anything besides the
writing simplification features. HTML breaks it, markdown breaks it, and it
can't do WYSIWYG (Hemingway does this last, but not well).

I don't mean to criticize the tools too harshly: linguistic processing of any
kind is hard and they do a good job at that. I can certainly see how this
would be useful for someone who writes more seriously than I do and can take
the time to write first and mark up or format in a different editor later. And
the effort to make it something I would use is large. I would probably want a
browser plugin that watched my text areas and handled markdown, and a vim
plugin. :)

But for me, not having integration with my workflow makes it too complicated
to use and the value it provides isn't large enough for me to change my
workflow.

[1] [http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)

~~~
microcolonel
Hemingway is actually pretty simple, I'm writing a library which implements
something similar. "Grammarly" exists, but I think the suggestions are silly.
This Foxtype editor is fancy, but Hemingway produces better results in
practice.

What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to be
especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think of
immediate cases where I can embed it. Elisp will come immediately after that,
since I compose my emails in Emacs most of the time. Next on the docket might
be a C version, with the intent that you could add it to GTK+ apps.

~~~
kerkeslager
> What programming language would a library for this have to be in for it to
> be especially useful? I'm doing it in JavaScript for now, since I can think
> of immediate cases where I can embed it.

I think JavaScript is a pretty good start as that can be made into a browser
plugin and a command line tool relatively simply.

------
Anthony-G
I’m an admirer of the writing of George Orwell so I thought it would be
fitting to paste the first two paragraphs of his 1946 essay, “Politics and the
English Language”.

It suggested removing a number of _modifier phrases_. These phrases were not
redundant and removing them would result in loss of important detail,
information and/or emphasis. In some cases removing those words would result
in nonsensical or syntactically incorrect sentences. Further experimentation
showed that it complained about “mostly” and “many” as modifiers but not
“some”.

It highlighted a number of _long noun phrases_ but none of these could be
suitably shortened, and Orwell’s uses of the passive voice were mostly
appropriate; re-phrasing these to be in the active voice would result in
awkward prose. Its _left branching sentences_ were not rambling at all.

On the plus side, I thought its highlighting of _long sentences_ worked well
but not all long sentences are difficult to parse and a succession of multiple
short sentences can have an unnatural rhythm. It also failed to take into
account that colons and semi-colons can be used to separate main clauses.

I wouldn’t use it myself, but I can see how it could be a useful tool for
considering how a sentence can be rephrased and encouraging awareness of the
issues it highlights.

------
conistonwater
This reminds me of the "Hemingway" app that failed Hemingway:
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=10416)

Can I also just point out that "I was exhausted." is not passive voice! And
"Our work here is done." also shouldn't be highlighted, it's absolutely fine.
What the hell? With these kinds of false positives, this seems like it would
do more harm than good.

~~~
jlos
The app is correct, both of those phrases are passive.

Grammatically the passive voice uses the equative verb to be with a past
participle of the verb. Both those phrases satisfy that condition.

Semantically, the passive voice involves action being done to the subject.
Both those phrases also meet that condition. Rearrange them and you'l see:

[1] "I was exhuasted" \--> "${SUBJECT} exhausted me". The phrase may not seem
passive because you've elided the subject, which is part of the problem of the
passive voice, it lacks clarity

[2] "Our work here is done" \--> "We completed our work" Like the first
phrase, this phrase elides the subject of this sentence, the individuals doing
the work. In this case, including the subject ("We") may feel repetitive
because of the pronoun "our", but its still more precise.

Also, passive voice isn't bad, however it most often lacks clarity. Sometimes
that's okay, and sometimes you want some flexibility with your sentences for
effect, such as ending a sentence with the subject (one of the primary reasons
to use the passive voice).

~~~
conistonwater
> _" ${SUBJECT} exhausted me"_

I don't think that a correct analysis of the sentence. The _exhausted_ is an
adjective, similar to _I am tired_ , but saying "Something tired me" would
have a totally different meaning, because it's a different, unrelated
sentence. ("I am covered in green paint." also doesn't seem like it's passive
voice, but maybe I'm wrong.) As far as I can tell, "our work here is done" is
indeed passive voice, but it is also perfectly fine English, and thus must not
be highlighted.

"I was exhausted" absolutely does _not_ "lack clarity". What could it possibly
be unclear about?

Looking at
[http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf),
I'm also suspicious of your definition of passive (p.7):

> _...passives do not always contain be and do not always contain a past
> participle. They also do not always obscure the role or responsibility of
> the doer. They may or may not have a subject (the passive clause in any
> monument defaced by vandals does not), and they may or may not have a by-
> phrase (The president has been assassinated does not). Sometimes they
> specify the agent of an action very clearly (as in It was thrown at them by
> hooligans), and sometimes not (as in It was thrown at them); sometimes they
> specify the undergoer (as in A surfer was attacked by a shark) and sometimes
> not (as in Being attacked by a shark is no fun). Often (as in (3)) there is
> no action whatsoever, rendering the strange phrase “receives the action”
> inappropriate._

~~~
ar-jan
For those who won't read the whole thing, here's the relevant part regarding
sentences like "I was exhausted":

> The term ‘adjectival passive’ is often applied (perhaps not very
> felicitously) to active clauses with predicative adjective phrases in which
> the adjective derives from the past participle of a verb and has a passive-
> like meaning. There is frequently an ambiguity between be passives and
> adjectival ones. For example, The door was locked is ambiguous: as a be
> passive it says that at a particular time someone took the action of locking
> the door, and as an adjectival passive it says that during some past time
> period the door was in its locked state. Since the complement in this kind
> of clause is an adjective phrase, verbs other than be can be used (The door
> seemed locked, as far as I could tell), and so can adjectives derived with
> the negative prefix un- (The island was uninhabited by humans).

------
jccc
"Four score and seven years ago..."

[http://i.imgur.com/K0Mhkse.png](http://i.imgur.com/K0Mhkse.png)

[I'm not snarking, by the way. Just playing with it. It's perfectly okay to
have a tool optimized for, say, business correspondence.]

------
multinglets
I feel like every 4 or 5 years, everyone gets together and celebrates terse
writing like it's some new insight.

~~~
daveguy
> I feel like every 4 or 5 years, everyone gets together and celebrates terse
> writing like it's some new insight.

Every 4 or 5 years everyone celebrates terse writing like it's new.

FTFY.

~~~
ksenzee
Writers periodically resurrect brevity.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Concise is better than brief.

~~~
BunnyRubenstein
Write right.

------
transpy
I say it is interesting. It's from the same guys from 'Watch a machine-
learning system parse the grammatical structure of sentences'. AFAIK, here
they are implementing automatic summarization, aided presumably by the
accuracy of their parser. I signed up and I look forward to trying it.

------
bearcobra
The variable pricing is pretty interesting. In one session I got $1, $3 and
$5, while another gave $5, $12, and $20. $5 felt like a good deal considering
what I pay annually for Grammarly. I'd be curious what their average is.

------
titzer
Most writing needs pruning. Not mine. Thanks. :P

------
jwally
Reminds me of this:
[http://www.hemingwayapp.com/](http://www.hemingwayapp.com/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8074243](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8074243)

------
Zolomon
Is there no beauty in painting vivid pictures through colourful expression?

Sure, being terse makes consumption faster and easier, but don't you trade

that for the tool of directing the reader's imagination?

I guess the skill is in being terse yet still descriptive?

~~~
combatentropy
The examples in this tool can be misleading, especially if you haven't read
the classics like _The Elements of Style_ and _On Writing Well_. Ridding your
writing of fluff is central to their teaching, but not at the expense of
detail.

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words,
a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing
should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This
requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid
all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."

\--- William Strunk Jr., _The Elements of Style_

Instead of quoting them at length, I will let you read them when you have
time. The Elements of Style is less than 100 pages, and most of On Writing
Well is tied up in the first four chapters.

~~~
eru
Be very careful with the Elements of Style. Not everyone shares their
prescriptions (and their descriptions are mostly wrong).

------
huac
[http://draftin.com](http://draftin.com) has something like this as well

------
kolapuriya
Testing this by using it to write a blog post. So far so good. It's pretty
nifty for "pruning" dense writing.

