New: Information Flow and Parallel Structure
ReallyWrite now analyzes two more aspects of your writing: information flow and parallel structure. Both are key principles of clear academic writing and are now available in the ReallyWrite Editor (currently with a Beta label).
Information Flow: start from what the reader knows
Have you ever read a sentence and felt lost, even though the words themselves were simple? Often the problem is that the sentence starts with something new instead of something that was already in the reader's mind.
Good academic writing follows the old-to-new principle: start each sentence with what the reader is already thinking about, then introduce new information. This principle creates a smooth chain of ideas that the reader can follow without effort.
For example:
Our model predicts outcomes for these patients. A novel biomarker significantly improves predictions in our model.
The second sentence puts a brand-new concept ("a novel biomarker") right at the start. However, it could start with what we read just before: the model predicting outcomes for patients. ReallyWrite will now flag this as "information flow" and suggest reordering so that the reader will see the familiar idea first.
Here is one way to revise it:
Our model predicts outcomes for these patients. This prediction is significantly improved by a novel biomarker.
Now the second sentence begins with something the reader is already familiar with, in this case, the prediction. The new information ("a novel biomarker") comes at the end, right where the reader is expecting to find it.
If ReallyWrite flags information as "new" that is not actually new to the reader, then it will be a false positive. We'd appreciate it if you let us know when this happens (if you feel comfortable, you can share the section of your text with us and we can use it to adjust our code). As always, use your best judgement.
Parallel Structure: keep your lists consistent
When you connect ideas with and, or, or nor, each part should have the same grammatical structure. If you mix up the grammatical structure, you will confuse the reader.
For example:
We aim to understand the mechanism and improving the protocol.
The first part uses an infinitive (to understand) and the second uses a gerund (improving). ReallyWrite will flag this mismatch and suggest that you use the same form for both parts — in this case you could use "to understand... and to improve".
The same goes for mixing types of clauses:
This approach is robust, reliable, and that it can be scaled.
Here, you have two adjectives and a that-clause. ReallyWrite catches this mismatch and nudges you toward a consistent structure.
You can read more about why parallelism matters on the parallelism learn page.
What to expect
Both new issues are currently in Beta testing. We designed them to err on the side of caution. They will miss some issues rather than give you a lot of false positives. As we validate them on more real-world texts, we will remove the Beta label.
As always, these are suggestions, not commands. Think critically about each one and decide whether revising them makes sense for your text.