Hemingway Editor: make your writing punchy in one pass

What the colors mean

Paste your text and Hemingway highlights it: yellow for long sentences, red for tangled ones, purple for complex words with simpler alternatives, blue for adverbs, green for passive voice. A readability grade summarizes the whole.

It's a diagnostician, not a doctor. It shows you where readers will struggle; the rewrite decisions remain yours.

A sensible editing pass

Fix the red sentences first — truly hard-to-read constructions — then split most of the yellow ones. Ignore the tool's enthusiasm for deleting every adverb; sometimes 'slowly' is doing real work.

Aim for the grade level your audience needs, not the lowest possible. Instructions for the general public deserve a low grade; a specialist article can sit higher honestly.

Protecting your voice

Taken literally, Hemingway would flatten everyone into the same clipped style. Use it on drafts where clarity matters most — emails, instructions, web pages — and ease off for personal essays and anything where rhythm is part of the point.

The goal is a reader who never has to re-read a sentence, not a text that sounds like a telegram.

Free versus desktop

The web version is free and covers the core features; a paid desktop app adds offline use and publishing options. For most people, the free browser version is the whole product.