4 ms·

I fed the first tech article I could find on NYT's front page (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley-techies-rich-pandemic.html https://w

I fed the first tech article I could find on NYT's front page (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley-techies-rich-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/technology/silicon-valley...) into Hemingway: - Grade 12 (aim for 9) - 14 adverbs - 4 uses of passive voice - 7 phrases have simpler alternatives - 14 of 72 sentences are hard to read - 30 of 72 sentences are very hard to read That's very close to the score of the 2010 article, the biggest difference is the lower number of adverbs. I'm guessing nothing has changed and there've always been outliers. (This is one article, I don't read the NYT, and I can't comment on the subjective quality of the piece, so take this with a grain of salt.)

TwoBit 6y ago
Or maybe this Hemingway scoring is bunk.
- duckerude 6y ago
  I don't think it's a good measure of overall quality. But if the writing became less crisp (as the article claims) I'd expect the score to change.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rsynnott 6y ago
> 4 uses of passive voice Use of passive voice is and always has been pretty common in journalism; I'd wonder if this Hemingway thing is actually an appropriate tool for evaluating journalism, just based on that.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Most people who think they know have, in fact, no idea what "passive voice" means. (E.B. White, of Strunk & White, e.g., certainly didn't.) Things they claim are aren't. Very likely, the tool doesn't either; if it gave the right answer, people would insist it was wrong. Whenever I find a stray copy of S&W, I throw it away. I have tossed a bunch. Everything in it is either trivial or wrong. The trivial parts wouldn't make a book, so White added lots of wrong. After his teacher, Strunk, died, White made up a bunch more fake rules, and then went back and doctored Strunk's text to obey them. But he didn't even notice he was violating them in his own text. For the detailed rundown, search "nasty book pullum strunk".
relaxing 6y ago
The NYT has always targeted a higher reading level. Through random circumstances I wound up reading the print edition of my city’s daily broadsheet for a few months. The difference in writing style and structure was incredible — the local paper felt dumbed down in comparison. Going back to the Times was like a breath of fresh air. This was a couple decades ago.

TwoBit 6y ago

Or maybe this Hemingway scoring is bunk.

duckerude 6y ago
I don't think it's a good measure of overall quality. But if the writing became less crisp (as the article claims) I'd expect the score to change.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rsynnott 6y ago

> 4 uses of passive voice Use of passive voice is and always has been pretty common in journalism; I'd wonder if this Hemingway thing is actually an appropriate tool for evaluating journalism, just based on that.

ncmncm 6y ago
Most people who think they know have, in fact, no idea what "passive voice" means. (E.B. White, of Strunk & White, e.g., certainly didn't.) Things they claim are aren't. Very likely, the tool doesn't either; if it gave the right answer, people would insist it was wrong. Whenever I find a stray copy of S&W, I throw it away. I have tossed a bunch. Everything in it is either trivial or wrong. The trivial parts wouldn't make a book, so White added lots of wrong. After his teacher, Strunk, died, White made up a bunch more fake rules, and then went back and doctored Strunk's text to obey them. But he didn't even notice he was violating them in his own text. For the detailed rundown, search "nasty book pullum strunk".

relaxing 6y ago

The NYT has always targeted a higher reading level. Through random circumstances I wound up reading the print edition of my city’s daily broadsheet for a few months. The difference in writing style and structure was incredible — the local paper felt dumbed down in comparison. Going back to the Times was like a breath of fresh air. This was a couple decades ago.