Assessing the readability of a Signature magazine article.

This month, we assess the readability of an article in the May/June 2010 issue of Signature magazine ("Does Your Media Kit Earn Rave Reviews?" by Carrie Hartin):

"An engaging sales kit is an extension of the sales presentation, helping your sales team show that story, by illustrating the crucial characteristics of your members -- not just regurgitating statistics churned out of your member survey. Tell the prospect, for example, what the readership's engagement with advertisers has been in the past and what their purchasing budgets generally look like. Follow that up with explanation of how members use your communication vehicles, and you've created a powerful selling story that you can illustrate with thumbnail examples of content-driven pages or screenshots."

--Word count: 92
--Average sentence length: 31 (37, 24, 31)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 21 percent (18/92 words)
--Fog Index: (31+21) x .4 = 20 (no rounding)

The Fog score of this sample is quite high. In this case, both the average sentence length and percentage of words with 3+ syllables are rather high. This is a tough sample to edit, as it contains longer terms specific to the subject at hand.

Let's see what we can do to improve the Fog score:

"A winning sales kit is an extension of the sales presentation. It helps your sales team by showing key member characteristics -- not just pulling numbers from member surveys. Tell the prospect, for instance, the readership's past engagement with advertisers. Show what their normal purchasing budgets look like. Then explain how members use your communication vehicles. Now, you've created a strong selling story that you can illustrate with thumbnails of content-driven pages or screenshots."

Here are the statistics for the revised sample:

--Word count: 74
--Average sentence length: 12 (11, 18, 11, 8, 8, 18)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 14 percent (10/74 words)
--Fog Index: (12+14) x .4 =10 (no rounding)

First, we needed to split up some of the longer sentences to reduce the average sentence length of 31 words. Three sentences became six and, with some tightening up of the syntax and trimming of words, we were able to reduce this average by more than half to 12 words.

Perhaps most challenging, we needed to reduce the number of longer words, a factor that contributed heavily to the original Fog score of 20. This can be difficult in business-to-business copy, but the effort paid off -- we were able to reduce the percentage of 3+-syllable words from 21 to 14 (a reduction of one-third).

Overall, these edits cut the Fog score in half (from 20 to 10).

Add your comment.

Comments:

"With a little bit of editing, the paragraph can be further improved:

'A winning sales kit is a key part of the sales presentation. It shows vital member characteristics, rather than simply pulling numbers from surveys. Show the prospect, for instance, the readership's past engagement with advertisers. Present their purchasing budgets. Then explain how members use your communication vehicles. Now, you've created a strong selling story that you can illustrate with thumbnails of content-driven pages or screenshots.'

Here's the Fog analysis:

Number of characters (without spaces): 372.00
Number of words: 66.00
Number of sentences: 6.00
Average number of characters per word: 5.64
Average number of syllables per word: 1.80
Average number of words per sentence: 11.00
Gunning Fog index: 8.64

Source:
http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp"

--Don Tepper, Editor, PT in Motion (American Physical Therapy Association). 05-26-2010.