Assessing the readability of a TheDigitalBeast.com article.

This month, we calculate the Fog Index of a TheNewsBeast.com article ("Can Advertising Survive Digital? Yes—By Leaving 'Mad Men' Behind" by Dan Lyons).

"In his film, he argues that companies for decades have behaved abominably and then used advertising to cover up their behavior. The Internet, by giving consumers a voice, has rendered that strategy useless because consumers can now sink a brand with a blitz of online complaints. His advice to big brands: instead of pumping millions of dollars into advertising, why not invest that money into actually fixing your company? Don't just say you're great-actually try to be great. Once you've done that, you can use social media to spread the word."

Word count: 92
--Average sentence length: 18 words (21, 25, 23, 10, 13)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 14 percent (13/92 words)
--Fog Index: (18+14)*.4 = 12 (no rounding)

This sample comes close to the ideal. Its exact score is 12.8, but, as you may remember from past issues, the final Fog score isn't rounded. Let's see what we can do to bring the Fog Index below 12.

"In his film, he argues that companies have behaved badly for decades and used advertising to mask that behavior. The Internet has given consumers a voice and rendered that tactic useless. Now, consumers can sink a brand with a blitz of online complaints. His advice to big brands: Instead of pumping millions of dollars into advertising, why not invest that money into fixing your company? Don't just say you're great; try to be great. Once you've done that, you can use social media to spread the word."

Word count: 87
--Average sentence length: 15 words (19, 12, 12, 22, 9, 13)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 10 percent (9/87 words)
--Fog Index: (15+10)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

With some tweaks here and there, we were able to shave off 3 words from the average sentence length and 4 points from the percentage of longer words. These small changes brought our Fog Index down from 12 to 10.

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