Documentation/Tools

This page is a list of tools that can help you create and maintain documentation.

Vale (CLI)

Vale is an open-source, command-line tool that acts like a linter for prose. Help collaborate on a Wikimedia configuration for Vale by contributing to kbach/vale-config.

Expresso (web)

Expresso is a free, open-source web tool to help improve the quality of your writing.

Try these filters in Expresso:

readability grade: Noting this score before and after editing provides a tangible measure of improvements made.
rare words: This filter highlights words outside the 5,000 most frequent words based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English. You may see some false positives, but removing rare words is an important way to make your writing more inclusive.
detached subjects: This filter highlights subjects that are more than 8 words apart from corresponding predicates. Removing detached subjects is a key improvement for readability.
entity substitutions: This filter highlights non-possessive pronouns as well as vague words like "thing" and "stuff". Pronouns are prone to ambiguity and can be problematic for translation. Use this filter to remove unnecessary pronouns and ensure that remaining pronouns have clear referents.
negations: Remove negations where possible, especially when used multiple times in a sentence.
clustered nouns: Checks for nouns with three or more words. Removing or rephrasing clustered nouns reduces complexity and makes the text easier to translate.
extra long sentences: This filter highlights sentences with 40 or more words. Break up any sentences highlighted by this filter.