Want to Write Better Blog Posts? Use This Content Editor
I recently installed the Hemingway editor. Another author had recommended it as one of the best tools for writing blogs.
Wow, was I impressed. It makes it easy to write. There are no distracting warnings from Word catching your attention. Gone are the red squiggles and double blue lines underneath your words.
Put it in writing mode, and all you see are your words on the screen. Flip it into editing mode, and out comes the red (or blue, green, purple, and yellow) pen.
It flags things that you may need to revisit.
For example, a long, hard to read sentence will show up with a yellow highlight. An extremely long and convoluted sentence will turn red.
Writing in passive voice turns the text green. Using a 5-dollar word, as my Toastmaster friend Dirk calls it, will turn the text purple. (It is a warning, no doubt, to avoid purple prose.) You can hover over the word to find a suggested replacement.
The suggestions are not automatic, because English is a tricksy language. It wanted me to replace “however” with either “but” or “yet”. Neither of those words actually worked in the sentence. We compromised on “though”.
Unlike Word’s “helpful” grammar tips, these are all valid items that should be changed. (Word and I have an ongoing disagreement about the positioning of commas.)
The goal of a writer is to make their thoughts easy for the reader to understand. Laborious sentence structure, polysyllabic words, and passive voice all impact readability.
I particularly like the way that it updates the target numbers as your word count increases. The number of adverbs and passive phrases are percentages rather than absolutes. The target number of hard to read sentences remains at 0, regardless of the length of your piece.
Perfect for writers on a budget
When you are starting out as a writer, you want to keep your costs low. Free tools are always preferred to paid ones. And inexpensive tools are more likely to be used than pricey ones.
There is a web-based version of Hemingway that is free.
If you’re like me, and are paranoid about losing your work due to an Internet outage, good news! The desktop version (available for both Mac and PC) is under $20.
It does not appear to have an auto-save function, so you will need to remember to hit the save button every so often. But that’s not a big deal. I’m already trained to do that on Word, since it only auto-saves to its proprietary cloud storage. (See previous comment on paranoia about losing work.)
Importing and exporting from Word
But what about my article structure templates? My carefully crafted call to action that I place at the end of each article? My embedded bullet lists and pull quotes?
Not a problem. In the desktop version, you can import files from Word, such as your article templates. The web-based version requires you to cut and paste.
The Hemingway editor includes basic formatting (bold, italics). It also includes title (H1), headline (H2), and subhead (H3) formatting. You can quote a paragraph, create a bullet list, or create an ordered list. You can even include hyperlinks to other content…such as the landing page for your call to action.
If you prefer to keep all your article drafts in folders in your computer, you can do that. You can export the file to Word, or save it in a native Hemingway format.
Helpful statistics about your writing
Another nice feature of the tool is that it gives helpful statistics about your writing. This goes beyond word count. It also counts sentences, paragraphs, characters, and letters.
It does need you to do a little math, to figure out things like your average number of sentences per paragraph. Or how many words are in your average sentence. (Roughly 2 and 11, for this article, if you were curious.)
But then it starts getting into the really interesting statistics. What grade level is your writing? How long will it take someone to read your whole article?
Given that blogging authors are often paid based on how long people remain on the page, that’s good to know.
Easy publishing to blogging platforms
Now, here’s the killer function of the app. The free, web-based platform only gives you the editing and statistics functions. The desktop version, though, lets you publish directly to your blogging platform.
It integrates with the Medium blogging platform, as well as with Wordpress. For Wordpress blogs, your blog can be hosted on Wordpress.com or on your own website.
It does not let you add graphics to the text files, so you will need to do a final clean up and polish of the draft. Still, it’s much nicer than having to cut and paste from a Word document into the blogging platform editor.
Personally, I prefer having a chance to view the final document on the platform before it goes live. I must not be the only one. Hemingway lets you choose between publishing and saving as a draft.
It’s not perfect
I realize I’m gushing with enthusiasm. It’s the same tone of voice I have when Levinger comes out with a new type of page for their Circa notebooks.
I can’t help it. I love tools that do what they’re supposed to do, and make my life easier.
That said, though, there is one thing that is a little annoying. There is no blank space after a paragraph.
That means I can’t tell at a glance if a line ends in a hard return (enter key) or soft return (word wrap). What do I do if I’m looking for places to break lengthy blocks of text into more, shorter paragraphs?
I have to try adding a paragraph break. If there’s now a blank line between paragraphs, there already was one. If not, it was a soft return.
The other issue I had was with cutting and pasting. It didn’t know enough to put a blank space between the text that was already there, and the text I was adding.
That was a minor thing. I had to type a space after the periods before and at the end of the section I copied.
Conclusion
If you want to make your blogs snappier, and more easy to read, use Hemingway. It is available in a free web-based version or paid desktop version for both Mac and PC.
It’s not as opinionated as Word (see the comma before “and” in the previous paragraph). It does not distract you with suggestions while you’re writing.
It calls your attention to passages in your writing that are difficult to read. This could be because of structure, or because of word choice. Either way, you know why it is being flagged.
A range of statistics tell you how easy your piece is to read, as well as how long it will take to read.
You can import and export to Word (and other formats). You can publish directly to your favorite blogging platform.
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