Assessing the readability of a Time.com article.

This month, we calculate the Fog Index of an August 28, 2013, Time.com article ("E-Readers are Supposed to Be Dying, but Kobo Keeps Making Fancier Ones" by Jared Newman). Let's take a look:

"There's no guarantee that Amazon and Barnes & Noble won't launch their own higher-resolution, premium e-readers this year. Even if they do, the very existence of these devices proves that there's life left in the e-reader market. Certainly, more people are having all their reading needs met by multi-purpose tablets, but that doesn't mean dedicated readers won't become more sophisticated or that people will stop buying them. They still serve a purpose due to their superior battery life and better readability, which might explain why e-reader ownership is still on the rise."

--Word count: 92 words
--Average sentence length: 23 words (18, 19, 30, 25)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 12 percent (11/92 words)
--Fog Index: (23+12)*.4 = 14 (no rounding)

This excerpt isn't in bad shape, but the Fog score is on the high side at 14. What can we do to bring the score below 12?

"There's no guarantee that Amazon and Barnes & Noble won't launch their own higher-resolution, premium e-readers this year. Even if they do, the fact that these devices exist proves that there's life left in the e-reader market. Yes, more people are having all their reading needs met by multi-purpose tablets. That doesn't mean avid readers won't become more sophisticated or that people will stop buying them, though. Their superior battery life and readability might explain why e-reader ownership is still on the rise."

--Word count: 83 words
--Average sentence length: 17 words (18, 19, 13, 17, 16)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 10 percent (8/83 words)
--Fog Index: (17+10)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

It didn't take much to improve the Fog score in this sample. Most of our edits were minor. We did the most editing on the last sentence to tighten it up and improve flow. By swapping out a few longer words and splitting one longer sentence in two, we were able to improve the Fog Index by four points.

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