Journalism issue from "A Word's Worth" - Readability

The Fog Index

When writing news stories, clarity and flow are essential. To achieve this flow, reporters should try to keep sentence length varied without allowing lengthy sentences to become tedious and convoluted. They should also attempt to achieve simplicity, using the most concise words in situations where there is the possibility to use a longer word or words. Eg: Don't use, 'in view of the fact that', where since is appropriate. In order to calculate the clarity of articles the 'fog index' was created by Robert Gunning. It was based on not only sentence length but syllables also. Here is an example of the fog index in practice, as well as the method of calculation.

The Fog Index is a proven method of analyzing written material to see how easy it is to read and understand. The steps you can use to calculate the Fog Index are outlined below. The numbers in the right column are based on this paragraph. When using these steps to analyze your writing, choose a sample that contains at least one hundred words. The "ideal" Fog Index level is 7 or 8. A level above 12 indicates the writing sample is too hard for most people to read.

1.	Count the number of words in the sample	88
2.	Count the number of sentences	6
3.	Count the number of big words (3 or more syllables)	6
4.	Calculate the average sentence length. Divide the number of sentences into the number of words	88/6 = 14
5.	Calculate the percentage of big words. Divide the number of words into the number of big words	6/88 = 7%
6.	Add the avg sentence length to the % of big words	7 + 14 = 21
7.	Multiply the result by .4	21 x .4 =
	Fog Index	8.4

I think that this is an effective method of ensuring articles are not becoming too long, tedious and complex. Source "The Fog Index" at Writing Tips website http://process.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/information/writing_tips.cfm