Assessing the readability of a Mashable.com excerpt.

This month's Fog Index sample comes from a September 29 Mashable.com article ("3 Beliefs That Transformed My Work-Life Balance" by Erin Greenwald for the Daily Muse). Let's take a look:

"If you feel like basic things are starting to slide off your schedule, try this: Sit down and make a list of things that need to get done every day, every week and every month, and determine how much time they take; this can include everything from activities you need for basic living -- an hour a week for personal administrative tasks (e.g. buying plane tickets, paying bills), 15 minutes every day for tidying up -- to personal non-negotiables like an hour twice a week to cook, or a few hours of 'you' time every week."

--Word count: 94 words
--Average sentence length: 94 words (94)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 6 percent (6/94 words)
--Fog Index: (94+6)*.4 = 40 (no rounding)

This sample yielded the highest Fog Index we've seen since we started doing this monthly column. The culprit is clear: the entire excerpt is one long sentence. We must split this up into smaller pieces if we want to bring our Fog score below 12. Here's our attempt:

"You may feel like basic things are starting to slide off your schedule. If so, try sitting down and making a list of things that need to get done every day, every week, and every month. Determine how much time they take. This can include everything from basic living tasks -- an hour a week for personal administration (e.g. buying plane tickets, paying bills), 15 minutes every day for tidying up -- to personal needs like an hour twice a week to cook, or a few hours of 'you' time every week."

--Word count: 90 words
--Average sentence length: 23 words (13, 23, 6, 48)
--Words with 3+ syllables: 4 percent (4/90 words)
--Fog Index: (23+4)*.4 = 10 (no rounding)

We only shaved four words from the original excerpt, but we quadrupled the number of sentences. In doing this, we ended up with a Fog score that is a quarter of the original. This month's sample shows us that just a few punctuation marks can make a huge difference in cutting through the fog.

Add your comment.