Assessing the readability of a Time.com excerpt.

This month, Editors Only calculates the Fog score of a December 17, 2010, excerpt from Time.com ("Drug Companies Await FDA Guidelines for Online Marketing," by Steven Gray):

"Surprisingly, it's the pharmaceutical industry that's been at the forefront of moving the FDA to issue social-media rules. The companies realize their traditional websites and advertising strategies are no longer sufficient tools to promote products in a competitive marketplace in which doctors, pharmacists and consumers aggressively trade information about medicine on blogs. The companies are also aware that "if they can't fully participate in the social-media conversation, they get marginalized," says John Mack, publisher of Pharma Marketing Blog, which attracts about 25,000 industry readers a month. One impetus is to protect companies' credibility in the face of rogue online outlets selling dubious goods. Part of the push is to resolve practical challenges, like how to sufficiently explain a drug's risks within the bounds of a 140-character tweet. Or a sponsored Google ad's roughly two lines of text?"

--Word count: 137
--Average sentence length: 23 words (18, 34, 34, 17, 24, 10)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 24 percent (33/137 words)
--Fog Index: (23+24)*.4 = 18 (no rounding)

This passage could use some trimming. Both the average sentence length and percentage of longer words are quite high. Let's see what we can do to bring down this Fog score:

"Surprisingly, the drug companies want FDA social media rules. Their websites and ads are no longer enough. With so many doctors, pharmacists, and clients discussing medicine on blogs, they know that 'if they can't fully participate in the social-media conversation, they get marginalized,' says John Mack. Mack publishes the Pharma Marketing Blog, which attracts 25,000 readers each month. Companies want to gain trust despite the rogue online outlets selling shoddy goods. They want to convey drug risks in a 140-character tweet or sponsored Google ad's two lines of text. This is no easy task."

--Word count: 94
--Average sentence length: 13 words (9, 8, 29, 12, 13, 18, 5)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 12 percent (11/94 words)
--Fog Index: (13+12)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

We were able to eliminate 43 words from the original excerpt. Average sentence length fell by 10 words, and we cut the percentage of longer words in half. The biggest challenge here was reducing the percentage of longer words without losing meaning or context.

(Note: There is one minor change to our Fog policy. We no longer consider words made 3 syllables by an "-ing" suffix in our longer word totals -- e.g., "discussing." In the past, we have only exempted words made 3 syllables by "-es" or "-ed" endings.)

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