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Monday, April 4, 2016

Easy Write - Write Using Only The Most Common Words

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Easy Write

I always used to find it difficult to write easy to understand product descriptions for the things I create. I recently came across a Mac app ClearText on Product Hunt. It allows you to write only using the top 1000 English words. It was simple and amazing but the problem is it only works on Macs. I cannot recommend it to my friends or my teammates who use a different operating system. One more problem I had with it is that it forces to remove uncommon words. I rather prefer a tool which encourages to use common words instead of enforcing it.

So, I made it! 😃

I made a web based editor which allows you to write using the most common English words (I used the same word database used in ClearText). It highlights all the uncommon words in your text encouraging you to replace them with a commonly used word. It basically encourages you to write like Trump as compared to "V" in V for Vendetta. For example, use "beautiful" instead of "gorgeous", "stupid" instead of "imbecile" and so on. Check the GIF below to see it in action.
Easy Write in Action

Applications

You can use it to write
  • Product descriptions
  • Help pages
  • Technical support email replies
  • Children books
  • Explaining elders or relatives how to use something
  • anything else that you can think of.
For example, if your product is designed for users all over the world, you must keep in mind that not everybody has English as their first language (like myself). If your product description uses complex vocabulary, many will find it difficult to understand and that may lead to less install/usage rate.

I have friends who work in customer support. They encounter customers of various educational backgrounds. Some customers may find it difficult to understand simple (for most of us) things like browser and text editor. If someone cannot understand your instruction: "Open this link in a web browser and click on the cancel button",  I recommend you use "Easy Write" and instead say "If you can see a "e" shape thing on your screen, click on it twice and and type www.somethingsomething.com and click on the red cancel button which you find at the bottom on the page". 😄 It may sound funny but it is not. It happens.

Conclusion

I hope you liked it. It only supports English for now. I am planning to support more languages and features soon.

> Try EasyWrite
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