Web Reads: Now everyone's a Hemingway

Robo-editor. If you want to be a better writer but don’t have an editor or teacher to point out your errors, the website Hemingway analyzes text for common mistakes such as passive voice, prolific adverbs, and overly long or confusing sentences. The website is a tad confusing because it doesn’t have a box in which you insert your paragraphs for analysis. Just type or paste text anywhere on the page and click "Edit." Since rules are made to be broken (oops, that’s passive voice), Hemingway does have its limits. The New Yorker tested samples of Ernest Hemingway’s writing in the app named after him. We’ll use Hemingway in our World Journalism Institute basic training.

Cover to cover. Those interested in books and design will find The Book Cover Archive an interesting place to explore. You can sort by categories such as typeface, designer, and genre.

The inventor’s plight. This story of Stanford University professor Alan Adler, inventor of the AeroPress coffee brewer and the Aerobie flying disc, is fascinating. The piece ends with Adler inquiring at the Stanford library about the process for donating his notebooks. The writer notes, “At every turn, the AeroPress—like most of Adler’s other inventions—encountered innumerable roadblocks, faced skepticism, and was doubted. Like anyone who has forged new ground, Adler had a choice at each junction: throw in the towel, or return to the drawing board; he consistently chose the latter.”

The world’s empty nests. Do you still live with your parents? The answer to that question differs greatly from country to country, as this graph shows. Adult children are least likely to live with their parents in the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, New Zealand, the United States, and Australia. It might seem that the trend results from Western affluence, but fewer than 20 percent of adult children in Rwanda live with their parents. The number there may reflect an awful consequence of the genocide rather than a personal lifestyle choice.

Outside the lies. In “Hang Up the Hangers,” Ryan Bomberger of The Radiance Foundation exposes the pro-abortion myth of thousands of maternal deaths from abortion before Roe v. Wade. He dug up a 1960 article written by then-president of Planned Parenthood Mary Calderone and published in the American Journal of Public Health. Calderone admitted in the article that “abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure” and said 260 women died from abortion complications in 1957.