I use Hemingway Editor daily for creating SEO, social media, YouTube, and email content.
It improves the readability and clarity of your writing, analyzes text for sentence structure, grammar, and word choice, and provides suggestions for making the writing simpler, more direct, and more powerful.
In this Hemingway app review, I’ll show you how to use this amazing tool to upgrade your content marketing efforts and become a better writer.
Let’s dive in.
What is Hemingway Editor?
Hemingway Editor is a free tool that helps you improve your writing by modeling the writing style of Earnest Hemingway. It cuts the fluff and forces you to write concisely using basic artificial intelligence.
The first step is to figure out which version of this app you will use. I prefer the free version on the web, but its desktop app works for Windows and Mac as well.
One quick note:
The desktop version of Hemingway Editor is more comprehensive in its suggestions than the browser version. But both are powerful, so you can’t go wrong with the free or the paid version.
You’ll notice that the user interface of Hemingway Editor is clean and straightforward, whether you’re using the free tool or the paid option (which is a one-time cost).
The online platform opens with a blank document; the editing area takes up most of the screen.
Above the editing area are a few buttons for formatting options:
On the screen’s right side is a sidebar displaying the document’s readability score, word count, and other statistics. It also highlights any issues that Hemingway Editor has identified in the text, such as complex sentences, passive voice, and overused adverbs.
Adverbs are controversial in writing, but famous authors like Stephen King frown upon them. Some believe that adverbs weaken your writing. While some contend that they have a time and place.
“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions.” – Stephen King
Either way, Hemingway Editor is opposed to adverbs and will highlight every instance that exists in your writing.
You can click on any of these highlighted areas to see suggestions for improving the text.
To open a new document in the Hemingway Editor desktop app:
1. Open the Hemingway Editor app on your computer
2. Click on the “New” button located in the top left corner of the app
3. A new blank document will open in the editing area, and you can start typing your text
You can also “Open” or “Import” an existing document by going to “File.”
How Does Hemingway Editor Work? Here Are 4 Awesome Features
Hemingway Editor offers several features that can help improve the readability and clarity of your writing.
And its ease of use is what makes it shine. Here’s how it works:
1. It Highlights Complex Phrases & Passive Voice
Hemingway Editor uses color-coding to highlight your text’s complex sentences and passive voice. These areas are highlighted in yellow and blue, respectively.
You can hover over the highlighted text to see suggestions for simplifying complex sentence structures or changing the writing style to an active voice.
2. It Counts Adverbs, Adjectives, & Total Words
Hemingway Editor counts the number of adverbs, adjectives, and words in your text and displays the results in the sidebar.
This can help you identify areas where you might be overusing these types of words and adjust accordingly.
3. It Provides Simpler Alternatives for Words or Phrases
Hemingway Editor suggests simpler alternatives for complex words and long sentences that it deems to be hard to read.
These suggestions are displayed when you hover over the highlighted text, and you can automatically click on the suggested alternative to replace the original word or phrase.
4. It Shows Your Readability Level
Hemingway Editor calculates a readability score for your text based on sentence length and complexity factors.
If you have a lot of run-on sentences, you will see a bunch of yellow sentences, indicating that these complicated sentences make it harder for your reader.
The readability score is displayed in the sidebar, which can give you an idea of how easy or difficult your text is to read.
To use these features, you can start typing or importing an existing one in the Hemingway Editor. Then, as you type, the app will highlight opportunities and adjust the readability in real-time.
5 Practical Use Cases for Hemingway Editor
You can use Hemingway for various applications, but remember it shouldn’t replace a dedicated editing process. Think of it as a supplement or a good starting point.
1. Create High-Quality SEO Content
We’ve seen a correlation between high-quality content and better SEO performance. It may not be a direct ranking factor, but good writing may have indirect effects.
For example, higher-quality content may attract more backlinks or shares. Google uses external signals to determine content quality. Therefore, it’s wise to attempt to create the best content possible to rank in Google.
We run every SEO content asset through Hemingway. Then, once it’s clean, we run the copy through Grammarly as our secondary check.
Lastly, run polished blog posts or web copy through Surfer SEO to optimize it for NLP (Natural Language Processing).
2. Upgrade Your Social Media Content
I write every single Twitter or LinkedIn post inside Hemingway.
As a result, I’m about to create efficient and engaging copy free of common errors. I recommend you do the same.
Errors like spelling mistakes take away from your brand’s authority. The app highlights these issues to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward online.
3. Create Better Emails
Email is the king of direct response marketing. To this day, there is no better channel for converting prospects into clients. But the key to success is your copywriting.
Use Hemingway to craft engaging copy that converts.
Spelling errors or grammar mistakes in your email can signal inexperience or a lack of professionalism. Always use a spellchecker on emails, and never send your first draft to customers.
4. Write Better Video Scripts
Every single YouTube script I write goes through Hemingway. Once again, this makes your videos more efficient and cuts the fat.
It’s a great way to score a better readability grade and make you feel more confident about your videos.
Engaging videos is critical for YouTube because attention spans are nonexistent.
5. Impress Your Book Editor
It’s a no-brainer to use Hemingway if you’re writing a book. I recently finished my book “The SEO Entrepreneur” and used Hemingway to edit every part as my primary book writing software.
Once I completed those edits, I sent them to my book editor. Now their job is much easier!
But here’s something that applies to ALL copywriting:
Separate your writing and your editing. Never try to edit while you write. It disrupts your creative flow, and you may not get all your thoughts out.
Just as your mindset should have an “editing mode” and a “writing mode,” so should the writing tools you use.
So focus on writing by clicking the “Write” button on Hemingway to ensure distraction-free writing.
Here, you enter write mode, and the sidebar of suggestions and editor highlights disappear.
Then, once you’ve emptied your thoughts on paper, edit in edit mode.
As they say, the success of any content is in editing. So don’t underestimate this part of the process. Not everyone has the bandwidth for human editors or editing assistants, which is why online writing assistants like Hemingway are such powerful tools.
How to Export Your Edited Content from Hemingway Editor (Only Available on Desktop App)
You can’t do this in the free version of Hemingway. But in Hemingway Editor, you can export your document in various formats, such as .txt, .doc, .docx, and .pdf.
To export a document in Hemingway Editor, you can follow these steps:
Click on the “File” button, “Export,” and select the format you want to export the document in (e.g., .txt, .doc, .pdf file):
Exported documents retain the formatting and text of the original document, but any suggestions or highlights provided by Hemingway Editor will not be included.
Remember that after exporting the document, you can open and edit it with any text editor or word-processing software supporting your chosen format.
Hemingway Editor Review (The Bottom Line)
Hemingway Editor is an awesome tool that every content creator should be using. As I mentioned, it’s one tool that I use daily. Take advantage of it and start creating better content.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the grades mean in Hemingway Editor?
The grade level estimates the level of education a person needs to understand the text. A lower level means the text is easier to read and understand, while a higher level means the text is more complex and harder to understand. The higher the level, the more complex the text is.
The aim is to have a lower grade level to make your text more accessible to a broader audience.
Seeing the reading level jump up a little is okay if you’re doing academic writing. And if you’re a freelance writer trying to hone your writing skills and submit a casually written blog post, you’ll want to see a lower reading level.
How reliable is Hemingway App Editor?
Hemingway Editor is a reliable tool for identifying areas of your writing that may be difficult to read or understand. After all, it is named after Ernest Hemingway.
The app uses algorithms to analyze your text, identify complex sentences, passive writing, and overused words and provides suggestions for simplifying them.
Remember that the Hemingway Editor is not a grammar checker like Grammarly. It may not catch all punctuation and grammar errors. Instead, it’s built to focus on readability.
I recommended using it in conjunction with a grammar checker tool like Grammarly Premium.
It’s important to note that there aren’t currently any browser extensions for Hemingway Editor. You can’t use an extension in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or whatever other word processor you use to do your writing.
You need to paste your work into the web browser app to use the editing app and check for grammatical errors and other mistakes.
How much does Hemingway Editor cost?
While there’s a free online version, there’s also an app version that’s available for a one-time payment of $19.99, good for both Windows and Mac OSX. Purchasing the downloadable version ensures that you won’t lose your work if you don’t have an internet connection or your browser crashes.
What do the colors mean in Hemingway Editor?
There are different colors for different mistakes in Hemingway, a nice feature for quickly scanning your work. Here are some bullet points on what each of the colored highlights means:
- Purple highlights: Indicates other word choices are easier to understand.
- Green highlights: Indicates a sentence is written in the passive voice.
- Red highlights: Indicates a sentence that is extremely difficult to read.
- Yellow highlights: Indicates a sentence that is too hard to read.
- Blue highlights: Indicates a troublesome adverb.
