One Clear Line (Alpha)

What is One Clear Line (OCL)?

OCL is an app that guides you to write easy-to-read content.

It is a Chrome Extension that you use with Google Docs.

OCL live in action

What problem is OCL trying to solve?

Getting readers to stay and read your article is difficult.

Typical web readers are quick with the “back button”.

❌ If the content is organized like a wall of text, they instantly click away.

❌ If the content is hard to read, they instantly click away.

They come to the internet to enjoy themselves, not to read an academic paper.

OCL helps to solve this problem by 

1. Detecting complex sentences ✅
2. Detecting chunky paragraph ✅

Getting Started with the Features

Let’s check out what features OCL has for the alpha version:

🤓 Readability Score

Readabililty Score

Calculated using the ARI formula, OCL gives your article an overall readability score.

From wiki: “it produces an approximate representation of the US grade level needed to comprehend the text.”

For easy reading on the web, try to aim for Grade 9 and below.

🕵🏻‍♂️ Complex Sentence Detection

Difficulty Distribution Chart

Sentences are categorized into:

• Normal
• Hard-to-read (H)
• Very hard-to-read (VH)

H and VH sentences are highlighted in yellow and red lines within the Google Doc itself.

You can also find the H and VH sentences in a list. Just click the list to look up for the specific sentence.

A list of hard-to-read sentences

🍖 Chunky Paragraph Detection

A paragraph overiew

OCL also helps with detecting paragraphs that are presented like a wall of text.

🟥 A red bar means that the paragraph is chunky

Clicking on the bar will help you look for the paragraph easily.

Aim for 2 - 3 lines per paragraph.

And that’s all the features we have in the alpha version!

There are plenty of exciting features that I want to add to OCL. 

I hope that you can join me on this journey.

How to Install the Chrome Extension:

The chrome://extensions page

1. Unzip the zip file into a folder.
2. On Google Chrome, go to chrome://extensions
3. Make sure Developer mode is turned on.
4. Click “Load Unpacked” and select the unzipped folder.
5. Now that it is installed, go to any Google Docs and you should see this: