Assessing the readability of a TechCrunch.com excerpt.

This month's Fog Index sample comes from a January 29 TechCrunch.com article ("Facebook Pays Teens to Install VPN That Spies on Them" by Josh Constine). Here's the excerpt, with longer words italicized:

"Facebook's spokesperson claimed that the Facebook Research app was in line with Apple's Enterprise Certificate program, but didn't explain how in the face of evidence to the contrary. They said Facebook first launched its Research app program in 2016. They tried to liken the program to a focus group and said Nielsen and comScore run similar programs, yet neither of those ask people to install a VPN or provide root access to the network. The spokesperson confirmed the Facebook Research program does recruit teens but also other age groups from around the world. They claimed that Onavo and Facebook Research are separate programs, but admitted the same team supports both as an explanation for why their code was so similar."

Word count: 120 words
Average sentence length: 24 words (28, 11, 35, 19, 27)
Words with 3+ syllables: 5 percent (6/120 words)
Fog Index: (24+5) *.4 = 11 (11.6, no rounding)

Here we have a sample with a higher average sentence length. However, the small percentage of longer words saves the day and keeps the Fog Index below 12. Still, let's see if we can make some simple edits to cut average sentence length:

"Facebook's spokesperson claimed that the Facebook Research app was in line with Apple's Enterprise Certificate program. In the face of evidence to the contrary, though, he didn't explain how. They said Facebook first launched its Research app program in 2016. They tried to liken the program to a focus group and said Nielsen and comScore run similar programs. Neither of those programs, however, asks people to install a VPN or provide root access to the network. The spokesperson confirmed the Facebook Research program does recruit teens but also other age groups from around the world. They claimed that Onavo and Facebook Research are separate programs, but admitted the same team supports both as an explanation for why their code was so similar."

Word count: 122 words
Average sentence length: 17 words (16, 13, 11, 18, 18, 19, 27)
Words with 3+ syllables: 6 percent (7/122 words)
Fog Index: (17+6) *.4 = 9 (9.2, no rounding)

There were several "but"/"yet" clauses that made splitting up the sentences quite easy for us. Interestingly, our version is 2 words longer but 2 points lower on the Fog Index. Turning 5 sentences into 7 cut the Fog by 2 points. We didn't even need to split up the 27-word last sentence.

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