How to use the Writing Style Report
The Writing Style Report gives you suggestions for improving your writing style within many categories. That includes highlighting edits to readability, verbs, voice, clauses, emotion tells, and repetition.
How to run the Writing Style Report
If you’re using the Web Editor, under the “Reports” toolbar, click on the “Style” icon.
If you’re using a ProWritingAid integration, hover over the floating ProWritingAid icon. Click on “Reports,” then click on “Core.” Finally, click on “Style.”
To help you find it, here is an image of the “Style” icon below.
The Writing Style Report will run. Under the title “Writing Style Check,” you will see a list of more than 10 writing style categories. The list will show where the report has found possible improvements in these areas. The report will also underline these areas in your text with color coding. We have shown this in the image below.
Click on each writing style category to see each specific issue under that category and the number of times it occurred in brackets.
Then hover over each issue in the list to select from a small icon menu. Click on the chevron icons to jump to the next or previous issue of this type in your text, as shown in the image below.
If there is only one issue, click on the arrow to jump to it as shown in the image below.
Click on the eye icon to hide underlining for this type of issue. You can click on it again to show the underlining again.
How to use the analysis in the Writing Style Report
The Writing Style Report checks the following categories for issues and improvements:
Passive verbs: These lack clarity and impact because the subject of the sentence isn’t doing anything. Consider reworking your sentences to use active verbs.
- Adverbs: These can be unnecessary if you can instead swap the accompanying verb for a stronger one.
Readability: This highlights where your writing is difficult to read. For a more in-depth readability analysis, run the Readability Report on your document.
Emotion tells: This highlights where your writing is telling the reader how to feel or how a character feels. It follows the concept of “showing, not telling” in creative writing. Consider rewriting the description with only specific surface details.
Style improvements: This highlights where you have redundant, overused, or ordinary words. It also suggests alternatives.
Hidden verbs: This is where you have transformed a verb into a noun by adding a preceding weaker verb such as “make,” “give,” or “take.” It suggests how to use the stronger original verb instead.
- Long subordinate clauses: These can not stand alone as a sentence. As they rely on the rest of the information in the sentence, lengthy subordinate clauses can weaken your writing.
- Passive index: The number in brackets shows the percentage of your writing that is in the passive voice. You should aim for a standard of less than 25% in published writing.
Repeated sentence starts: this highlights when you’ve started lots of sentences with the same word. Consider rewriting some of the sentences to avoid repetition and make your writing more engaging.
- Style guide items: This highlights when you have broken your own style guide rules. Find out more about creating a custom style guide.
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