Assessing the readability of a Wired.com excerpt.

This month, we calculate the Fog score of an excerpt from a March 27 Wired.com article ("With Office for iPad, Microsoft Kills Its Old Ideology" by Ryan Tate). Here's the text:

"Now Microsoft finds itself backed into a corner. By trying to use its apps to protect its operating system, it destroyed the relevance of both. In the world of mobile devices -- a category that already overshadows PCs -- Microsoft's selling virtually no operating systems even as Office has been withheld from the only app markets that matter, those run by Apple and Google. Officially speaking, Microsoft claims it held back Office for iPad not for strategic reasons but to make it work better, to integrate better with Microsoft's developer interfaces and web services."

--Word count: 91 words
--Average sentence length: 23 words (8, 17, 36, 30)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 12 percent (11/91 words)
--Fog Index: (23+12)*.4 = 14 (no rounding)

This excerpt is in good shape, but the Fog Index is on the high side. We need to get it below 12 for prime readability. Let's see what we can do:

"Now Microsoft finds itself backed into a corner. By protecting its operating system with its apps, it destroyed the relevance of both. Mobile devices already overshadow PCs. Microsoft's selling virtually no operating systems, even as Office has been withheld from the only app markets that matter, Apple and Google. Microsoft claims it held back Office for iPad not for strategic reasons but to make it work better with Microsoft's developer interfaces and web services."

--Word count: 74 words
--Average sentence length: 15 words (8, 14, 5, 22, 25)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 11 percent (8/74 words)
--Fog Index: (15+11)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

We were able to pare down the word count considerably in this sample (from 91 to 74 words). This helped to bring down the average sentence length and to delete some longer words. Our edits brought the Fog score down by nearly a third.

Add your comment.