The App is best viewed as a simple tool to be used by a writer capable of knowing when to ignore advice. Writing tools are no substitute for confidence and voice, which writers must find on their own. Most generic advice tends to flatten, to dull, to unify. Like most writing tools, The Hemingway App doesn’t give you the ability to take a style and own it. It has nothing to do with the man himself. Its only job, which it does well, it to identify a select range of errors. It’s strong and crisp and poetic in its simplicity.The Hemingway App knows nothing of poetry. Wouldn’t Papa turn over in his grave at the very thought? The negative reviews console the part of me that loves the poetry inherent in Hemingway’s work so absent in this app. They seem to think that the Hemingway App implies an absolute imitation of Hemingway, as if the App has passed a Turing test. Author Jerry Coyne lists great authors throughout history who fail the Hemingway app, The New Yorker notes that Hemingway himself would fail this app, and scores of other reviewers pooh-pooh the very notion of it. Since this app is more than a year old, I have the benefit of being able to read earlier reviews of it. I do wish that it has been around for my undergraduate English students when I was still marking their papers. Sometimes it’s useful to write at a Grade 7 writing level. Since I do not need to write in a journalistic style most of the time (you’ll note that I haven’t front-loaded this post, but buried the lede) I take its advice in stride. The App is purportedly inspired by Hemingway’s lessons in writing journalism. I’m aware of my complex sentences and passive voice, and I can choose to alter them or not. Rather, it helps make my writing purposeful. Of course, I don’t feel any need to slavishly follow its advice. It’s nice to have a second pair of eyes to look over a paragraph that isn’t quite working. It then tells you where the passive sentences are, the adverbs, and the overly complex sentence structures. The web-based (or desktop-for-a-fee) application allows you to cut and paste in your text. The Hemingway App is a simple tool for identifying common writing errors. I’ve recently come across a program that purports to help. What if you could learn to write like Ernest Hemingway?
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