Assessing the readability of an MSNBC.com excerpt.

This month, we assess the readability of an excerpt from the January 11, 2010, edition of MSNBC.com ("Apple May Wipe Slate Clean for New Tablet," by Jessica Mintz):

"But the mechanics of the human body may be stronger than Jobs' charisma. We tolerate devices like smart phones with their tiny screens and awkward keyboards because they're fine for what we need them for -- quick, on-the-go reading and messaging. As soon as the screen gets bigger, though, people tend to start wanting to do more with the device, such as typing longer missives, says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer for Frog Design, a firm that designed one of Apple's first computers. At that point, the limitations of small screens and the lack of a real keyboard could be intolerable, and people would move up a rung to a small laptop."

-- Word count: 112
-- Average sentence length: 28 (13, 28, 42, 29 words)
-- Words with 3+ syllables: 7 percent
-- Fog Index: (28+7) x .4 = 14 (no rounding)

The ideal Fog score is less than 12. This particular passage contains rather long sentences (13, 28, 42, and 29 words). Trimming or splitting them up would yield a score well within the ideal Fog range, as there is a fairly low percentage of long words. For instance, we might revise the passage in the following manner:

"But the mechanics of the human body may be stronger than Jobs' charisma. We accept devices like smart phones with their tiny screens and awkward keyboards. They're fine for what we need them for -- quick, on-the-go reading and messages. As soon as the screen gets bigger, though, people want to do more with the device, such as typing longer missives, says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer for Frog Design, a firm that designed one of Apple's first computers. At that point, the small screens and lack of a real keyboard might compel people to upgrade to a small laptop."

Here are the statistics for the revised sample:

-- Word count: 99
-- Average sentence length: 20 (13, 13, 13, 39, and 21 words)
-- Words with 3+ syllables: 4 percent
-- Fog Index: (20+4) x .4 = 9 (no rounding)

We have trimmed 13 words from the MSNBC version. Changing "tolerate" to "accept" and "messaging" to "messages" brings down our percentage of long words (reminder: "-es" noun endings do not count as a third syllable) to 4 percent. Our sentence length has decreased because have split the second sentence into two sentences.

Add your comment.

Comments:

"I'm not sure of the exact calculations, but using the calculator at http://simbon.madpage.com/Fog/fog.cgi, the original comes out to a Fog Index of 14.06.

The revised version above comes out to 10.00

Here's a version I came up with:

'But the mechanics of the human body may be stronger than Jobs' charisma. We accept devices like smart phones with their tiny screens and awkward keyboards. They're fine for what we use them for -- on-the-go reading and texting. When the screen gets bigger, though, people want to do more with the device, such as typing longer missives, says Mark Rolston. He's chief creative officer for Frog Design, a firm that designed one of Apple's first computers. The small screens and lack of a real keyboard might compel people to upgrade to a small laptop, he says.'

That clocks in at an even better 8.529." --Don Tepper, Editor, PT in Motion

Editor's Note: Fog scores may vary slightly depending upon the calculation tool used. We make our calculations by hand; however, there are online Fog calculators available. We suspect that the online instruments are not as sensitive to some of the Fog Index nuances (e.g., compound words and words with "-es" or "-ed" endings). Also, we do not round our final Fog score; therefore, although our edited sample weighed in at 9.6, it received a Fog score of 9.