See how often you reuse the same first word (or first two words) across sentences. Surfaces monotonous prose where every sentence starts with "The" or "I".
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Use the sentence beginnings analyzer when editing fiction, narrative essays, or any prose that should read with rhythm. Common targets: catch over-use of "I", "The", "This", "It" at the start of consecutive sentences.
Sentence Length Variety measures rhythm by length; Sentence Beginnings Variety measures it by lexical patterns. Use both for a complete rhythm audit.
The analyzer takes the first word (or first two words) of every sentence and counts the frequency.
A variety score (unique openings / total sentences) summarizes the pattern — above 75% is varied, below 50% is monotonous.
It flags any opening word that dominates more than 25% of sentences as a likely revision target.
Group-by-1 catches single-word patterns (every sentence starting with "The"). Group-by-2 catches phrasal openings ("In the beginning"…).
Above 75% unique openings for engaging prose. Below 50% reads as monotonous.
Deliberate anaphora ("I have a dream… I have a dream…") and step-by-step lists ("First… Second… Third…") are exceptions.
Input
"The cat sat. The dog ran. The bird flew. The fish swam."
Output
"The" opens 4/4 sentences (100%) — monotonous.
Every sentence opens identically. Variety could be added: "The cat sat. A dog ran by. Above, a bird flew. Below, fish swam."
This tool tallies the opening word of every sentence. It is a narrow measurement that catches a wide problem, because sentence openings are where a reader picks up rhythm, and repetition there is far more noticeable than the same repetition mid-sentence.
The most common pattern it surfaces is a run of sentences all beginning with the same subject — usually "I", "It", "This" or the name of the thing under discussion. Prose like that reads as a list even when it is argument, and the fix is usually to vary how sentences connect rather than to hunt for synonyms.
Worth its own note, because it is both a rhythm problem and a clarity problem. A sentence beginning with a bare "This" requires the reader to work out what it refers to, and when the previous sentence contained several candidate nouns, different readers resolve it differently.
Adding the noun — "This constraint", "This finding" — costs one word and removes the ambiguity entirely. If the openings tally shows "This" high on the list, that is usually the most valuable edit available on the page.
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