Advantages & Disadvantages

Rewordify.com is a great new way to understand more of what you read, but you should see it as another tool on your toolbelt rather than a magical way to help you understand every single thing you read (because it can't do that).

Here are some advantages and disadvantages to using Rewordify.com versus dictionaries.

Rewordify.com

 

Advantages:

• Very fast: long, complex text is greatly simplified within a second or two (exact speed may vary)
• Parts of speech and verb tenses maintained: Rewordify.com attempts to replace adjectives with adjectives, nouns with nouns, past tense verbs with past tense verbs, etc. 
• Phrases are simplified: Rewordify.com looks for huge numbers of short expressions and phrases and simplifies them
• Context-based translation: Rewordify.com attempts to simplify words based on how they're used in a sentence
• User-adjustable: you can customize the way the site works to fit your learning style
• Sentence structure: original authors' sentence and paragraph structure is not changed, to help familiarize you with different writing styles

Disadvantages:

• Limited reference source: Rewordify.com does not explain or translate huge numbers of medical, legal, philosophical, political, artistic, and science terms, historical events, and so on. If a term can't be easily explained or reworded into a small number of words, it's left alone.
• Possible strange output: Rewordify.com may reword difficult language into expressions that are strangely-worded and unclear. (This is the case with all computer-based translation.)
• Oversimplification: In an effort to be simple, Rewordify.com can strip out some of the beauty and shades of meaning within language. 

 

Dictionaries

 

Advantages:

• Excellent reference source: Dictionaries can define or explain almost every word in English
• Detailed word information: Dictionaries provide word origins, pronunciation guides, other forms of words, synonyms, and lots of other information

Disadvantages

• Time consuming to use: You must look up words one at a time
• Confusing definitions: Dictionaries often define difficult words with difficult words, and define words in terms of themselves
• Misleading definitions: When you look up a form of a word (like combatively), dictionaries almost always return the definition of the root of the word (like combative), which can be confusing. For example, this might make you think that the following sentence is OK: "The angry student was usually combatively every morning."

Summary

If you want a fast way to make language simpler, use Rewordify.com. If you want more detailed knowledge about words, use a dictionary. They're both important tools to help you become a better reader!