Assessing the readability of an NYTimes.com excerpt.

This month's Fog Index text comes from a June 23 NYTimes.com article ("Amazon, the Brand Buster" by Julie Creswell). Here's the sample text, with longer words italicized:

"On the surface, the move into the private label business (in which goods are sold under the retailer's name rather than that of an outside vendor) appears to be a deft move by Amazon. Analysts predict that nearly half of all online shopping in the United States will be conducted on Amazon's platform in the next couple of years. That creates a massive opportunity for Amazon to more than double revenue from its in-house brands to $25 billion in the next four years, according to analysts at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. That's the equivalent of all of Macy's revenue last year."

Word count: 100 words
Average sentence length: 25 words (34, 25, 31, 10)
Words with 3+ syllables: 8 percent (8/100 words)
Fog Index: (25+8) *.4 = 13 (13.2, no rounding)

This sample weighs in at 100 words, the ideal length for a Fog sample. What isn't ideal is the Fog Index, which is slightly elevated at 13.2 (Remember, we want a text sample's score to be below 12.) Let's try some edits to cut 2 points from the score:

"On the surface, Amazon's move into the private label business (in which goods are sold under the retailer's name rather than that of an outside vendor) appears to be a deft one. Analysts predict that nearly half of all online shopping in the United States will happen on Amazon's platform in the next couple of years. That gives Amazon a chance to more than double in-house brand revenue to $25 billion in the next four years, analysts at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey claim. That's equal to of all of Macy's revenue last year."

Word count: 92 words
Average sentence length: 23 words (32, 24, 26, 10)
Words with 3+ syllables: 5 percent (5/92 words)
Fog Index: (23+5) *.4 = 11 (11.2, no rounding)


For this edit, we focused on tightening up the text. Our overall word count shrank by 8 percent, which shaved 2 points from the average sentence length. We also were able to cut the percentage of longer words from 8 to 5. As a result, we cut the Fog Index by exactly 2 points, enough to get us below 12.

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