I've always found that a lot of writing can be improved just by getting rid of unnecessary words.
The hard part is noticing them.
For example, there's not much reason to write:
due to the fact that
when you could just write:
because
Or:
in close proximity to
instead of:
near
These aren't huge changes, but when you have a whole page full of them, they add up.
Removing that extra wording can make something much easier to read.
So I built a small tool to help find them.
You paste your writing into it and it highlights phrases that can be shortened.
You can hover over a phrase to see the suggested replacement and choose whether you want to use it.
There's also a Replace All button if you want to apply the shortest suggestion everywhere.
I didn't want to use AI
There are already a ton of AI tools that will rewrite your writing.
That's actually why I didn't want to make another one.
I don't necessarily want an AI to rewrite something I've written. I might like the way I phrased something, but still want to get rid of a few unnecessary words.
I also like knowing exactly why something is being suggested.
Simplify Your Writing is just a dictionary of phrases and replacements. There isn't an AI model deciding what your sentence should say.
If the dictionary says:
due to the fact that → because
that's what it suggests.
Every time.
The whole thing runs in the browser, so there are no API calls or accounts either.
The part I need help with:
The code isn't really the biggest problem.
It's the dictionary.
There are a ridiculous number of phrases that could probably be shortened, and I obviously haven't found all of them.
More importantly, I don't want to add replacements that technically make a sentence shorter but make the sentence worse.
That's where other people can help.
You don't have to be a programmer to contribute.
If you write, edit, or work with documentation, you probably know a bunch of phrases that could be simplified.
You could contribute something as simple as:
at the present time → now
Or find an existing rule that doesn't actually work in every situation and suggest changing it.
I'd particularly like to get contributions from people who work with:
Technical writing
Documentation
Business writing
Copywriting
Academic writing
Editing
Developers are obviously welcome too. There's plenty of work that could be done on the JavaScript, UI, tests, accessibility, performance. Also there are opportunities to expose this as an API or MCP tool but still serve the deterministic logic under the hood.
Why I'm making it open source
I think a dictionary like this gets better when more people can look at it.
If it's just my list of phrases, it's going to reflect my own writing habits and the things I've happened to notice.
I'd rather have people contribute phrases, argue about whether replacements actually work, and improve the rules over time.
That's really the goal here.
Not to build another AI writing assistant.
Just to make it a little easier to write clearly.
If you find a phrase that should be included, or one of the suggestions is wrong, feel free to open an issue or submit a PR.
