The Fog Index
Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012 at 7:35 PM
Assessing the readability of a Time.com excerpt.
This
month, we calculate the Fog Index of an article from Time.com ("Four
Industries Apple Can Disrupt in the Near Future," by Tim Bajarin).
"Imagine
being able to just tell your TV, 'Find Big Bang Theory,' and it
goes right to all available versions on broadcast, cable, your digital
video recorder or online. Or ask it about a football player you just saw
make a touchdown, and on the bottom of the screen it shows you his
stats. Or if you want to find out about Yosemite, just ask Siri and it
will find all related video and web content available and give you exact
answers to your query on the TV. But perhaps its greatest feat will most
likely be to instantly decipher the plethora of web-based video content
that is online, and neatly show what is available for a given topic
right on your TV screen."
--Word count: 124
--Average
sentence length: 31 (29, 25, 34, 36)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 10
percent (13/124 words)
--Fog Index: (31+10)*.4 = 16 (no rounding)
In
this case, the clear culprit is sentence length. While only 10 percent
of the words in qualify as "long," the average sentence length is a
hefty 31 words. Let's see if we can break this down into more manageable
parts.
"Imagine telling your TV, 'Find Big Bang Theory,' and
having it display all versions on cable, your DVR, or the Internet.
Wondering about a football player you just saw make a touchdown? Ask
your TV and get his stats at the bottom of your screen. Want to find out
about Yosemite? Just ask Siri and it will find all related video and Web
content and display the results on the TV. Most importantly, ITV will
collect the plethora of online videos and show available content for a
given topic right on your screen."
--Word count: 93
--Average
sentence length: 16 words (21, 11, 13, 6, 20, 22)
--Words with 3+
syllables: 9 percent (8/93 words)
--Fog Index: (16+9)*.4 = 10 (no
rounding)
The original contained unneeded words and consisted of
just four sentences. We were able to turn four sentences into six and
trim word count to bring our Fog score down by 7 points. Splitting up
longer sentences improved not only the Fog score, but also the rhythm of
the writing.
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