ReadingRate · What's new · 2026-10-28
Check your own writing for words that close a question
ReadingRate has a guide page called The limits of your language, about the words that end a question instead of answering it. It sorts them into seven groups, gives the Latin name for each move, and shows one claim argued at three levels of complexity. It also has a checker: paste a review, an email or a post, and it underlines every word from the seven groups and counts them. The check runs in your browser and nothing you paste is sent anywhere.
Available on web.
The page grew out of an essay on Gravity's Rainbow, which it uses as the novel that stages the move past straight-line thinking. It ends with novels from the catalogue and where each sits in Northrop Frye's four kinds of story.
The three levels come from the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. You choose a claim and read it argued at each, which makes the difference between them easier to see than a definition does.
What it can't do
- The checker knows words, not structure. It cannot tell a careless "obviously" from a quoted one.
- It scores sentences, never people. A count of words says nothing reliable about how anyone thinks, and the page says so.
- The word lists are English. The page itself is also in Russian.
- This is a single guide page, not a writing tool with saved history.
Questions people ask
- What is a thought-terminating cliché?
- A word or phrase that closes a question instead of answering it. ReadingRate's guide groups them into seven kinds, names the move behind each, and lets you check your own text for them in the browser.