Assessing the readability of a Forbes.com excerpt.

This month, we assess the readability of a February 11, 2010, Forbes.com excerpt ("Are the Feds Cracking Down on Online Poker?" by Nathan Vardi):

"All of that is at risk now, as well as possibly the entire U.S. online poker industry, where 2.5 million Americans play and bet $30 billion annually. A 2006 law, set to go into full effect in June, expanded the Justice Department's authority to shut down online gambling operations by going after the companies that process their financial transactions. The feds have already stopped some financial firms from being part of the business, using some old antigambling and bank fraud laws on the books. The public comments of federal law enforcement officials suggest that they view firms like DoylesRoom as just plain illegal."

-- Word count: 103
-- Average sentence length: 26 (27, 32, 25, 19 words)
-- Words with 3+ syllables: 16 percent
-- Fog Index: (26+16) x .4 = 16 (no rounding)

As you probably remember, the ideal Fog score is less than 12. This passage contains a high percentage of long words (3+ syllables), even after omitting capitalized words and words with "-es" and "-ed" endings. The average sentence length, 26 words, is also quite high. We might simplify the passage by trimming longer sentences and substituting some of the longer words, perhaps like this:

"The U.S online poker industry, where 2.5 million bet $30 billion each year, is now at risk. A 2006 law taking effect in June expands the Justice Department's power to go after companies that process online gambling transactions. The feds have already used old gambling and bank fraud laws to edge some financial firms out of the business. The public comments of federal officials suggest that they view firms like DoylesRoom as illegal."

Here are the statistics for the revised sample:

-- Word count: 73
-- Average sentence length: 18 (17, 21, 20, 15 words)
-- Words with 3+ syllables: 11 percent
-- Fog Index: (18+11) x .4 = 11 (no rounding)

The most drastic reduction was in the average sentence length after cutting 30 words from the sample; however, we were also able to reduce the percentage of long words from 16 percent to 10 percent. These revisions resulted in a shift in Fog score from 16 to 11, an improvement by nearly one-third.

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