A faster site, a new Learning Tool, and an export function!

We love making Rewordify.com better and better. Here's what's new:

We redesigned the home page. We reduced the amount of text, and we removed the images and replaced them with information tables. The result is an extremely fast-loading page with less text to read.

The printable Learning Tools are now cleaner. We took "Rewordify.com," etc., off our printable Learning Tools. Tools like the Matching Sheet, List with Definitions, etc., used to have our website name and links at the top of the printout. We took them out so the printed Learning Tools are completely plain, for fewer distractions and more flexibility of use.


We created a new Learning Tool.  It's called Print Text with Vocab Column: (Click the image to see a bigger version.)

For any rewordified block of text, it displays the block of text with the hard words underlined in a left-hand column, and the associated definitions near the hard words in a right-hand column.

To make the page less cluttered, it only defines a hard word once, the first time it's used.

To get this, simply rewordify any block of text, and select "Print Text with Vocab Column" from the Learning Tools that display under the text.

It's one more way that Rewordify.com can help your students build their vocabulary and improve their reading comprehension. In a few clicks, they have any text printed in a way that makes it easier to understand.

You can now export to CSV any list of hard words. CSV stands for Comma Separated Values. It's a file format that lets you export and import data from one web site or program to another.

After you rewordify a block of text, you'll see "Export to CSV" in the Learning Tools. When you cick it, you'll get a plain screen that looks like this (of course, when you do it, you'll see the hard words in your text block):

"hard word","definition"
"difficult word","easier phrase"
"word3","definition3"
etc...

You can a few things from here.

• You can copy-paste the screen into another program that can import word lists, like some online flash card and studying sites
  
• You can copy-paste the screen into a spreadsheet program. If you do, you may have to select a feature called "text to columns" so they're separated into two columns
  
• You can save the page as a .CSV file. To do this, select "Save Page As" (or similar command) in your browser. Then, give the file a name that ends with .CSV. Be sure to select that you're saving it as a File Type of text.

You can only export 50 words at a time.

Please contact us with any feedback about these new features!

Change the highlighting style in one click!

We just made Rewordify.com faster and easier to use.

Before today, to change the highlighting style of a text block, you had to click "Settings," then change the style, then click "Save."

Now you can do the same thing in one click!

When you rewordify a text block, you'll now see a new "Highlighting style" area in the right-hand section of the top panel (click to see a bigger version):

Just click a highlighting style and the style will instantly change. We hope you agree that one click is better than three. When you change the highlighting setting this way, it's only a temporary override; the next block of text you rewordify will use the default style that's on the Settings page.

To permanently change the default style, click on "Settings" at the top right and make the change on that page

We hope that this change makes Rewordify.com more flexible, faster, and easier for you to use.

Questions? Comments? Please contact us and we'll respond personally every time.

What's new!

Much faster load times

The home page and help page now load much faster than before and use much less data upon loading. You'll especially see the speed increase on mobile phones and tablets. School administrators should appreciate the significant drop in network traffic caused by our site.

How did we do it? Previously, we auto-loaded the YouTube video player on the home page and help page. Now, we don't load the player until you click on the video.

This is part of our quest to make Rewordify.com work as quickly as possible, so it works like a native app on your tablet or smartphone.

(Nerdy details: We don't use jQuery or any other javascript library. We don't download custom fonts. We strategically load local CSS and javascript to save download time when optimal. We use all CSS3 with no background images for the site look and feel.)

The result? A snappy site that's great to use.

More power and flexibility to web site and blog owners

We have a great feature where web site owners and bloggers can make it easy for anyone to simplify the language on any web page in one click.

Now, users of that feature can have more control over how the reworded pages appear. You can now decide whether or not the yellow navigation box appears on reworded pages. You can also choose whether links on reworded pages take users to reworded versions of the other pages on your site, or whether those links take them to the original versions of your pages.

Read this page on our site for more information, and learn how we're helping you use technology to improve literacy around the world!

We keep getting better, because of you

Nearly every day, we improve the way that Rewordify.com simplifies text. For example, we just added words like neurochemicals and dyscalculia, phrases like faculty members and universal coverage, and the site now knows the difference between crude (oil) prices, crude (rough and low-quality) devices, crude (rude and sexual) comments, and crude (rough) estimates in a sentence like this: (Copy-paste it into Rewordify.com if you want to be impressed.)

The woman used a crude digging device to figure out where to dig the next crude oil well; her friend gave her an estimate that was crude, but she felt confident enough to start digging even though her friend made crude, unwanted remarks.

Please keep sending in your suggestions for improvement; we love adding new features and making the site more useful, so more people use the site to read more. Just contact us about anything on your mind; we'll respond personally every time!

The limits of Rewordify.com

Every once in a while, we get an email from a user that asks things like:

• Why won't Rewordify.com reword my text to a certain grade level? (or)
• Why doesn't Rewordify.com reword this word or that word?

Rewordify.com knows over 40,000 difficult words and phrases, and we add new words and phrases to it almost every day. Also, we frequently make the site "smarter" at figuring out how hard words and phrases are used, so they're replaced with language that sounds natural and is easy to understand.

You also get our exclusive READ level (Rewordify.com Estimated Average Difficulty level), a highly valid measure of text complexity that works the same way as (and is strongly correlated to) the Lexile measure.

Sometimes these things work together beautifully, and sometimes they fall short. This is because working with language is terrifically difficult for computers, and no computer can come close to a human being's ability to figure out how hard a passage is, or how to re-state something more easily.

The limits of a computer

Computers think that this passage is easy to understand (READ 430, Lexile 480L):

Those who know the breath of forever know the crying of the Earth. They know the wall that is tomorrow. They know the sad waving of the tree branch. They know the pain of the dusty ebony sky.

Computers also think that this passage is many grade levels more difficult (READ 1390, Lexile 1050L):

The shocked policeman saw the alien whisk the surprised boy into the spaceship. The policeman sneaked down the hillside, through a maze of young maple trees, closer to the unlucky spot.

Rewordify.com can't simplify the first passage. It doesn't know why the Earth is crying.

The site can't simplify the second passage. It doesn't contain any difficult words, except maybe whisk, but eggs can be whisked as well as people, and we don't want to say that the boy was beaten.

Technical terms and troublesome words

Here's another example of a challenge for the site:

Washington applauded the conservative approach within Rickerson's organic Renaissance work.

A computer can't know that Washington means important scientists in Washington, D.C. Words like conservative and organic have multiple meanings that can be challenging to figure out. Also, Renaissance is a complex topic that can't be summarized in a few words.

The site can help!

The moral of this story? Although we make Rewordify.com better nearly every day, no computer can replace a teacher. But, Rewordify.com is a great learning tool that can empower independent learning when a teacher isn't around. Feel free to explore the site, learn how it can help, and contact us with any questions or suggestions.