An experiment: syntax highlighting for the English language

In short: visit this page to see the experiment.

Today, I had an idea. Let me bore you with the details of how this idea came to me:

The presenter of a talk I was watching noted that he doesn’t much like syntax highlighting in his code. Personally, I do like syntax highlighting. I feel like it allows me to, at a glance, see what’s going on. This idea is akin to the “We Process Images and Symbols Faster than Words” in an article of Ryan Florence’s. When I see a gray line, I immediately know it’s a comment. When I see green, it’s a string.

…wait, what if we had that for English? What if text was easier to read because it was color-coded?

So I coded this up. It does simple “syntax highlighting” for the English language, by coloring periods and commas and quotes. It dims some common words.

Take a look at the code if you’d like! It’s not too pretty, but it’s just an experiment. Also I’m super sorry that the code is ugly.

Let me know what you think!