As I finished my post about “Widgets for Writers,” I remembered something important that I wanted to share.
“Get me Rewrite: The Craft of Revision” is a NewsU course developed by Casey Frechette and myself. Casey created a number of tools that, like my favorite widgets, help me with my writing.
There’s “sentence tracker,” which enables you to see a visual representation of the length of your sentences and paragraphs — vertical bars for sentences and shaded background for paragraphs.
I first used it by pasting in a “Chip on Your Shoulder” column slated to run that day. It looked okay — first few sentences were short, making cognitive processing easier; then the next few grew longer, mirroring the complexity of the prose.
But then a third of the way down, I beheld a horrifying sight — a sentence bar that, by comparison, resembled a skyscraper. Casey programmed the tracker to reveal words per sentence with a mouse rollover. The offending sentence was 64 — that’s right, sixty four — words long.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Casey. I dashed back to my office. A few minutes later, that looooonnnnng sentence was broken up into a short intro, followed by three to four bullet points.
If you haven’t enrolled in NewsU, I encourage you to do so. It’s free, painless and gives you access to “Get me Rewrite” and many other stimulating online courses.
