Source: WebProNews Author: Stephen Bradley
----------------------------------------------------------------At least when it comes to their reading comprehension.
It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Less people will complete a doctorate as will complete a four year undergraduate degree. Less people will compete a four year degree as will graduate high school. Less education usually means less reading and less reading leads to a lower level of reading comprehension. If the words and sentences you use are too complex a number of people who might otherwise appreciate what you have to say may have trouble following how you’re saying it.
Blogging is a conversation and in order to have a meaningful conversation both sides need to have the ability to understand each other. You could be turning away readers by making it too difficult for them to read and follow what you have to say.
How do you know what level of education is likely needed to understand your writing? Enter the Gunning fog index.
What is the Gunning Fog Index?The Gunning fog index is a simple test developed by Robert Gunning in the 1950s. The Wikipedia page on the other side of the previous link, lists the algorithm for calculating the index as:
1. Take a full passage that is around 100 words (do not omit any sentences).
2. Find the average sentence length (divide the number of words by the number of sentences).
3. Count words with three or more syllables (complex words), not including proper nouns (for example, Djibouti), compound words, or common suffixes such as -es, -ed, or -ing as a syllable, or familiar jargon.
4. Add the average sentence length and the percentage of complex words (ex., +13.37%, not simply + 0.1337)
5. Multiply the result by 0.4
which leads to the following formula:
The number you get at the end should be the average level of education a person needs to understand the passage in question. A Gunning fog index of 12 correlates to a high school senior.
The formula isn’t perfect. Words like “everyone,” “popular,” and “average” are considered complex words, because each has three syllables. I doubt many would stumble over those words or require having a high level of education to comprehend them. Still if you use them your Gunning fog index goes up. Some passages with a high index are rather easy to read and you can write a passage with a low index that is much more complex than the index would say it should be.
Overall the Gunning fog index does seem like a reasonable indication of how difficult a passage is to comprehend.
Click here to read full article...Side note: Most newspapers and magazines are written on an 9th - 11th grade level. ~ TTW
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