Live clarity score
A single 0–100 number at the top of the editor. It blends the Flesch Reading Ease with how densely your writing leans on hard sentences, passive voice, adverbs, complex words, and filler. Tighten a line and watch the score climb.
iPhone and iPad App — Version 1.2
Proselens: Writing Clarity
A writing lens that reads your text the way a sharp editor would — live highlights, a 0–100 clarity score, six readability indices, and a Writing Target that tells you whether your prose hits the right level for your audience. Everything on-device, fully offline.
Color-coded inline highlights
Six categories flagged the moment you stop typing. Tap any chip in the legend to focus that category and jump straight to it. Toggle any check on or off — counts and score update instantly.
Very hard sentence
Very long or tangled. Break it into shorter sentences.
Hard sentence
Long or dense. Consider splitting it.
Passive voice
Active voice is usually clearer and shorter.
Adverb
A stronger verb often says it better.
Weasel word
Vague qualifier. Cut it or back it up.
Complex word
A simpler everyday alternative exists.
What’s in version 1.2
Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch–Kincaid Grade were in v1.0. Version 1.2 adds four more, all computed on-device:
| Index | Measures |
|---|---|
| Gunning Fog | Polysyllabic word density (Gunning, 1952) |
| SMOG Grade | Polysyllables per 30 sentences (McLaughlin, 1969) |
| ARI | Characters-per-word ratio (Senter & Smith, 1967) |
| Coleman-Liau | Letter frequency (Coleman & Liau, 1975) |
Cross-checking multiple indices gives a more reliable picture than any single score alone.
Tell Proselens who you’re writing for. The Stats sheet shows whether your current grade level is on target, too complex, or too simple for that audience.
- General public (Grade 6–9)
- Plain language — Grade 6
- Everyday reader — Grade 8
- Educated adult — Grade 10
- High school graduate — Grade 12
- Academic / technical
When a complex word is flagged, the Issues list now shows the suggested plain-language replacement right below it — e.g. utilize → use, facilitate → help, methodology → method — so you can act on every flag without leaving the list.
Generate a clean plain-text summary of every metric, readability index, and issue count. Share it via the iOS share sheet to paste into a document, email it to a collaborator, or save it to Files. No external service involved.
Tap “Word Frequency” in the Stats sheet to see your top content words ranked by count, with a frequency bar for each one. A Type–Token Ratio (TTR) tells you whether your vocabulary variety is High, Good, Fair, or Low. Articles, prepositions, and common function words are excluded — only the words that carry meaning appear. (Source: NLTK stop-word corpus, Bird, Klein & Loper, 2009.)
The Stats sheet now includes a color-coded bar chart of every sentence in your document, sized by word count and colored by the same hard / very-hard thresholds as the editor. Spot monotonous pacing — a wall of same-length bars — at a glance, or confirm you have healthy variety. A brief tip appears when all sentences cluster at the same length.
Each saved draft now shows a +/– badge next to its clarity score whenever the score changed since the previous save. Green means the draft improved; red means it got harder. A fast signal for writers working through revisions.
The numbers that matter
0–100. Higher is easier. Plain English targets 60–70; academic writing typically sits below 30.
Six indices each estimate the U.S. school grade needed to comfortably read your text. Compare them to spot outliers.
Set your own words-per-minute rate. The estimate updates live as you write.
Words, sentences, paragraphs, characters, average words per sentence, average syllables per word, and polysyllabic word count.
Private by design
Proselens uses Apple’s on-device language tools (NaturalLanguage framework) to do all of its analysis right on your iPhone or iPad. There is no networking code in the app at all. Your words never leave your device — not to us, not to anyone. Works fully offline. No account, no sign-in, no tracking, no ads.
100% on-device
No network
No account
No tracking
Pay once, own it
Built for real writing
- Adjustable thresholds for what counts as a hard or very hard sentence
- Adjustable reading speed for accurate reading-time estimates
- Editor text size from 13 to 26 pt, with an optional monospaced mode for code and scripts
- Library of saved drafts, searchable by title or content
- Copy or share checked text in a tap
- Dark, focused interface designed to keep you in the words
- Full Dynamic Type and VoiceOver support