Omnivorous Surfer

Expresso is an online "tool to edit texts and improve your writing style." It is a work-in-progress by a graduate student, Mikhail Panko, and is very easy to use. Expresso seems to me to be an interesting way to examine writing in a different way from standard grammar editors. It could prove useful in a variety of situations. As stated on the site, however, it is not

The site is incredibly easy to use. Simply key in or paste your text, click Analyze text, and an extensive listing of metrics will be presented.
First is a list of metrics for editing. Clicking on any of those will highlight related entries in the text. For example, click on weak verbs and all of the weak verbs in the text will be highlighted. You may edit if you choose, and to make your work easier, mousing over a highlighted word gives you a list of synonyms to choose from. Clicking on weak verbs again will remove the highlights. A few of the metrics in this list are extra long and short sentences, frequent words (by stem), clustered words, filler words, and passive voice.

A second list is of general metrics, such as number of characters and words, syllables per word, readability grade, and percentage of parts of speech.

Edited work can be copied and pasted back into your word processor. This is facilitated by the ability to use Ctrl-A to select all your text, excluding other text on the page. If you wish to mark your changes before transferring, you could use standard hot-keys to bold and or italicize text before copying.

The site includes a description of what it does and how it can be used, a tutorial, and an explanation of each of the metrics. The designer makes it clear that it is not a "magic bullet," but that it should be used to identify weak areas and to get ideas for possible edits.