Paul Graham's writing seems simple and direct to me, so I wondered how the website would treat one of his essays. Here are the suggestions from the third paragraph of http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html:
"The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively (only) about English literature. (Sentence hard to read) Certainly (Adverb) schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes (Forms, makes up) a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens. (Sentence very hard to read).
This is given a "readability" score of grade 14, which I suppose means it can only be deciphered by college sophomores or above.
I wondered how it would read after being rewritten to achieve a perfect score in the site, so I took a stab at it:
"In school students write essays about English literature. But real essays can be about many more things. Schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. All over the country students are not writing about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees. They are not writing about the role of color in fashion. They are not writing about what makes a good dessert. They are writing about symbolism in Dickens."
The result brings me straight back to my days of taking standardized tests, where the test had a snippet of some essay, and was followed by questions on the topic. There was information in those snippets, but very little tone. It could be a bad attempt at my part, but while the information remains in my version, the tone is gone--I can no longer smell the air of Cambridge in that writing.
Your version reminds me of "easy reader" editions of normal text -- or of an essay written by someone that's just learned how to write (a 6-7 year old?). It's fascinating how a few changes can change the "voice" of even such a short paragraph.
Anyway, great illustration both on how tweaking text can create contrasting changes, and how following "best practices" can be a bad thing. I suppose the original paragraph could actually be (slightly) improved by following some of the suggestions from the site, though. There's always room for improvement in any text.
Interestingly, when I pasted the entire article, it gave me the score of Grade 8. Complex sentences can still be interspersed between simple ones and get a good readability score.
These tiny sentences (in your version, and in Hemingway's stories) remind me of little children's books (and the alt-comedy storyline from the Martian steampunk shoot-'em-up Jamestown). IMO they appear a little condescending themselves.
The real Hemingway or the website? I was hoping someone would explore the idea this tool could remove elitism, since I haven't made up my mind on that (I think Paul's version is much more pleasant to read). I guess this is a start.
Thinking along those lines, has anyone put Jeff Atwood's writing into this thing? He's an extremely effective communicator to large tech audiences, and my guess is that he should have a more readable score on this thing than Paul would.
"The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively (only) about English literature. (Sentence hard to read) Certainly (Adverb) schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes (Forms, makes up) a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens. (Sentence very hard to read).
This is given a "readability" score of grade 14, which I suppose means it can only be deciphered by college sophomores or above.
I wondered how it would read after being rewritten to achieve a perfect score in the site, so I took a stab at it:
"In school students write essays about English literature. But real essays can be about many more things. Schools should teach students how to write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. All over the country students are not writing about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees. They are not writing about the role of color in fashion. They are not writing about what makes a good dessert. They are writing about symbolism in Dickens."
The result brings me straight back to my days of taking standardized tests, where the test had a snippet of some essay, and was followed by questions on the topic. There was information in those snippets, but very little tone. It could be a bad attempt at my part, but while the information remains in my version, the tone is gone--I can no longer smell the air of Cambridge in that writing.