The Writer’s Diet™ is a diagnostic tool created by international writing expert Dr. Helen Sword to help writers shape up their sentences. Based on a simple algorithm, the tool identifies some of the sentence-level grammatical features that most frequently weigh down stodgy prose so that you can learn to communicate more clearly and effectively.  

The Writer’s Diet analyzes your text sample or document and displays a tongue-in-cheek diagnosis based on the percentage of highlighted words in each of five grammatical categories associated with ponderous prose:

• be-verbs (forms of the infinitive to be);
• zombie nouns (a.k.a. nominalizations, which are abstract nouns created from other parts of speech);
• prepositions (including the word to when used as part of an infinitive verb construction);
• ad-words (selected “academic adjectives” and adverbs);
• it, this, that, there)

You can filter your diagnosis by word category and/or document region and even change the theme (for example, from “flabby or fit” to “cloudy or clear.”)

The Writer’s Diet prompts you to think about how, why, and how often you use the highlighted words, but you are not expected to delete them all or to banish them from your writing. Moderation, not extremism, is the key to verbal fitness.

The Writer’s Diet highlights patterns in your prose that you might not otherwise have noticed, such as an over-abundance of multisyllabic adjectives or a predilection for prepositions. For best results, download the free Writer’s Diet add-in for MS Word and use the diagnostic tool together with the book (which discusses stylistic subtleties and exceptions that the tool does not measure) and this User Guide (which provides detailed guidance on understanding and refining your diagnosis). See also the Writer’s Diet workout, a sequence of free, low-cost, and premium resources designed to coach you towards producing clearer, sharper prose.

Verbs

• Favor strong, specific, robust action verbs (scrutinize, dissect, recount, capture) over weak, vague, predictable ones (have, do, show).
• Limit your use of be-verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been) to no more than a few per paragraph.
• Avoid passive verb constructions (the research was performed; mistakes were made) unless you have a specific reason for using them.

Nouns

• Anchor abstract ideas in concrete language and images.
• Illustrate abstract concepts using real-life examples. (“Show, don’t tell.”’)
• Limit your use of abstract nouns, especially nominalizations (a.k.a. “zombie nouns”) that have been formed from verbs or adjectives, such as conceptuality or intellectualization.

Prepositions

• Avoid using more than around three prepositional phrases in a row (e.g. “in a letter to the author of a book about birds’) unless you do so to achieve a specific rhetorical effect.
• Vary your prepositions.
• As a general rule, do not allow a noun and its accompanying verb to become separated by more than about twelve intervening words.

Adjectives & adverbs

• Let concrete nouns and active verbs do most of your descriptive work.
• Employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute new information to a sentence.
• Avoid overuse of “academic ad-words” with suffixes such as able, ac, al, ant, ary, ent, ful, ible, ic, ive, less, ous.

It, this, that, there

• Use it and this only when you can state exactly which noun each of these words refers to.
• Avoid using that more than once in a single sentence or three times in a paragraph, except to achieve a specific stylistic effect.
• Beware of sweeping generalisations that begin with “there.”

[Adapted from The Writer’s Diet by Helen Sword].

On the Writer’s Diet website (“the test”), when you paste a sample of your writing into the text pane on the left-hand side of the screen and click “run the test,” your diagnosis appears in the analysis pane on the right-hand side. To test a new sample or refresh your diagnosis, click “run the test” again.

In MS Word add-in (“the app”), you will see your Word document displayed on the left-hand side of your screen (the text pane) and your diagnosis on the right (the analysis pane). When you make editorial changes in the text pane, the analysis pane is dynamically updated. If you are using the Writer’s Diet app in a desktop version of Word, you can resize the analysis pane and move it around; if you are using of Word Online (the free version of Word in Office 365), the width and placement of the analysis pane remain fixed.

Each of the five colored bars in the analysis pane corresponds to one of the five Writer’s Diet word categories: be-verbs, zombie nouns, prepositions, ad-words, and it, this, that, there. The higher the percentage of highlighted words in a given category, the longer the corresponding colored bar will be, and the less favorable your diagnosis for that category. Other visual clues for interpreting your results include the emojis at the top of each column, which range from happy to neutral to sad, and the cross-hatching in the three right-hand columns and on the region bars, which signals increasingly “heavy” prose. You can see the five possible diagnosis levels for your current theme by clicking the emoji bar.

To gain a better understanding of how the words in each category work within your sentences and why you might wish to consider using them in moderation, refer to the corresponding chapters in The Writer’s Diet.

On the Writer’s Diet website (“the test”), the grey diagnosis bar shows you the overall diagnosis for your text sample; to filter by category, tick the box next to any one of the five category bars.  The views that you see corresponds roughly to Region view (overall) and Region view (category) as described below.

In the Writer’s Diet add-in for MS Word (“the app”), the diagnosis panel may display any one of four diagnostic views, each determined by a different set of parameters. Click anywhere in the grey or purple panel to find out your current view.

• Document diagnosis (overall): This is the first view that you will see upon opening the app, indicated by a dark grey background and a white “document” icon (a single page). The overall diagnosis for your document is displayed in white uppercase letters, along with the total number of eligible words in your document.
• Document diagnosis (category): To filter your document diagnosis by category, tick the box next to any of the five category bars. The background on the diagnosis bar will remain dark grey to indicate that you’re still in document view, but the “document” icon and region bars will now display the category color, and underneath your diagnosis you will see the percentage of highlighted category words in the document.
• Region diagnosis (overall): To filter your document diagnosis by region, click on any purple region bar in the area below the grey diagnosis bar. The text in that region is highlighted in the five category colors, and diagnosis bar now displays a purple background, a white “region” icon (multiple pages), and the eligible word count for the region.  (To navigate from region to region, you can use the forward and back arrows at the top of the analysis pane; to close region view and return to document view, click the X in the diagnosis bar).
• Region diagnosis (category): To filter by category in region view, select the box next to any word category. The purple background of the diagnosis bar indicates that you are still in region view, while the color of the “region” icon shows you which word category you have selected.

In the Writer’s Diet add-in for MS Word (“the app”), if your document has enough eligible words, it will be split into multiple paragraph-based regions. (The number of words in each region is determined by the overall length of your document). The region bars can help you see at a glance which sections of your document — those with the thickest borders and darkest cross-hatching — are likely to benefit most from editorial pruning. In category view, the color of the region bar borders corresponds with the selected category color; in overall view, they are purple.

An unfavorable diagnosis in any category (indicated by cross-hatching in the colored bar) merely indicates that your writing sample contains a relatively high percentage of words in that category. For example, if 5% of the words in your writing sample are nominalizations, you will receive a diagnosis of “Needs Toning” in the “zombie nouns” category, which suggests that you might want to cut back on the number of abstract nouns in your text and/or add more concrete language. For detailed advice on how to reduce the number of words in each word category, why you might wish to consider doing so, and when to make exceptions, see the corresponding chapter in The Writer’s Diet.

Users of the Writer’s Diet sometimes send feedback suggesting that each highlighted word should be accompanied by a drop-down list of acceptable alternatives. These writers have misunderstood the purpose and function of the Writer’s Diet. The test is not intended to correct your grammatical errors, do your writing for you, or tell you how and what to write. (Sorry!) Instead, the tool encourages you to think holistically about how your words, sentences, and paragraphs work together to create and convey meaning to your readers. Used in conjunction with the book, the Writer’s Diet test can help you develop and fine-tune your own judgement and skills as a writer.

When you run the Writer’s Diet test or app, any excluded (cross-out) text is not counted as “eligible words.” Thus, for example, a 500 word document consisting entirely of bullet points (which are excluded by default) could end up having no eligible words at all. To change the default settings for excluded text, click on the cog wheel to open the Settings menu, then select the Exclusions tab and make your changes.

Open MS Word, select the Insert menu, and then choose Get Add-ins. Search for the Writer’s Diet in the Office Store (don’t forget the apostrophe!) and add it to Word.  Alternatively, you can go to the Office Store and download the add-in from there.  To open the add-in, go to the Home menu in Word and click on  the yellow Writer’s Diet icon.

The Writer’s Diet app is an add-in to Microsoft Office Word. The desktop version of the app is compatible with Microsoft Office 2016, Office 2019, and Office 365. (Please ensure that you have the latest version installed). Alternatively, you can use the free online version of Microsoft Office 365 at www.office.com.

Check that you are using a compatible version of Word (see above); make sure that you have the latest Microsoft Office patches and that your PC has the latest Windows patches installed. If your software is not up-to-date, or if you are using a version of Word other than the ones listed above, you may encounter difficulties with using the app. 

The app has been tested with Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, and Safari.  Safari may be slow to load on initial installation; please be patient!  

Yes, the add-in is compatible with both PC and Mac versions of MS Word.  As noted above, please ensure that your software is up to date, with all of the latest patches installed.

The Writer’s Diet does not store or sell your data in any form.

If you run the online test (“the test”), no one but you will have access to your text sample or your diagnosis.

If you download the Writer’s Diet add-in for MS Word (“the app”) and run it on a locally-installed version of Microsoft Office for Windows or Mac OS, your data is not uploaded to the cloud and is kept private at all times. The Writer’s Diet app does not send your data anywhere for analysis, nor is it shared with a third party.

If you use the app with the free online version of MS Word as part of Office 365, your writing is stored in the cloud, and your data is therefore governed by the privacy rules associated with your Microsoft Office account. To learn more about these rules, please review the Microsoft privacy policy for your region.

The Writer’s Diet™ is protected by Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND. Both the online test at www.writersdiet.com/test (“the test”) and the MS Word add-in (“the app”) are free for personal and educational use but cannot be adapted, altered, or used for commercial purposes without explicit permission in writing from the copyright owner.  Usage of the app is also governed by the Microsoft Standard Application License Terms.