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The Fog Index

Posted on Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 11:03 PM

Assessing the readability of a TheDailyBeast.com excerpt.

This month, we analyze an excerpt from The Daily Beast ("The Digital 100 Power Index" by Nick Summers). Here's the original:

"In a sector as sprawling as tech -- where 'genius' might describe the idea to monetize LOLcats as readily as the way transistors are crammed onto a chip -- power takes many forms. Some of the names on our list, like Tim Cook, derive theirs from an obvious history of success. As Steve Jobs's No. 2 at Apple, Cook's genius for operations gave the company's designers and engineers precious advantages in creating futuristic devices. He has continued that work as CEO, lifting Apple's already stratospheric stock more than 50 percent since Jobs's death. There are others we include who derive their power more from potential: in the streaming service Spotify, has Daniel Ek delivered yet another revolution in the way we listen to music?"

Word count: 122 words
--Average sentence length: 24 words (31, 18, 23, 19, 31)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 16 percent (19/122 words)
--Fog Index: (24+16)*.4 = 16 (no rounding)

The good news is that this week's sample is pretty close to the mark. The average sentence length is on the high side, but we've seen higher. We can also try to reduce the number of words with three or more syllables. Here's our attempt:

"In a sector as sprawling as tech, power takes many forms. 'Genius' might describe both the monetizing of LOLcats and the cramming of transistors onto a chip. Some of the names on our list, like Tim Cook, derive power from a history of success. As Steve Jobs's No. 2 at Apple, Cook's operational genius empowered designers and engineers to create high-tech devices. He has carried on that work as CEO, lifting Apple's already sky-high stock more than 50 percent since Jobs's death. Others on our list derive their power more from potential. For instance, has Daniel Ek spawned another music listening revolution with streaming service Spotify?"

Word count: 106 words
--Average sentence length: 15 words (11, 16, 17, 18, 20, 10, 14)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 10 percent (11/106 words)
--Fog Index: (15+10)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

This was a difficult piece to edit. All it takes is a few careless strokes of the keyboard to obliterate an author's meaning. We did some minor copy editing to trim word count and split up sentences without losing meaning. In the end, we were able to bring our Fog score down from 16 to 10, a reduction of over one-third.

Finally, some food for thought: We included "idea" in our count of words with three or more syllables. However, does a word like this truly "fog" up the passage? What do you think, editors?

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