As a former middle school ELA teacher, I appreciate the challenges of teaching students how to write the clear, informative texts called for by the Common Core Standards. Students often have trouble making their sentences concise and sticking to the topic at hand. They create long-winded sentences that end up losing their reader. Here is a site that can help teach our students that sometimes, in writing, less is more.

Hemingway is a site influenced by Ernest Hemingway’s simple and direct style of writing. The site is free and does not require a username. Students choose “write” to create a new document or copy and paste an existing document. When they choose the “edit” option the site automatically recognizes five common areas of struggle by highlighting them in different colors. These areas are:

1. Sentences that should be shortened

These sentences are highlighted in yellow. This tells students that the sentence should be shortened, or perhaps broken into two different sentences. Concise sentences help to keep the reader’s attention and deliver a point clearly.

2. Dense and complicated sentences that should be rewritten

These sentences are highlighted in red and it tells the writer that the sentence is confusing. When writers see the red highlight they should edit the sentence and simplify it until the red highlight goes away.

3. Adverbs

The site advises its users to use 2 or fewer adverbs per text. Again, this is similar to Hemingway’s actual style – he thought nouns and verbs were the most powerful words and did not waste time describing them too much. Adverbs are highlighted in blue.

4. Words or phrases that could be simpler

These words are highlighted in purple. While it is important to understand complex vocabulary words, it is also important that students know when it is appropriate to use these words versus when they become distracting.

5. Uses of the passive voice

Many students have difficulty writing in the present tense and using that tense consistently throughout their piece. The words that are highlighted in green show the writer that he or she has used the passive voice, which should be avoided in explanatory pieces.

The different colors of the highlighters is a great way to engage those students who are visual learners. When changes are made to the highlighted text the color will disappear as the problem is fixed.

Beyond the highlighting, there are a couple other cool features to this site. It counts paragraphs, sentences, words, and characters. A slider on the top right side of the screen tells you the lowest education level needed to understand the writing. The writer is encouraged to stay below a level of 10 to ensure that it is easy to understand.

As seen in the picture above, one of the great features of the site is its simplicity. It is straightforward and user friendly without too many distracting buttons. In fact, as I wrote this blog I copied and pasted the draft into Hemingway and used it to make my writing “bold and clear” for the readers.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or contact us via email at training@teq.com.