Assessing the readability of a TheAtlantic.com excerpt.

This month's Fog Index excerpt comes from a November 27 TheAtlantic.com article ("Everything on Social Media Is for Sale" by Taylor Lorenz). Here's the sample text, with longer words italicized:

"Noah wouldn't tell me exactly what he brings in every month from social-media promotion, but deals such as the ones he does can quickly add up. 'For a repost, depending on how long they want it up, it can go from $70 to $200,' he said. He charges $80 for an Instagram Stories swipe-up or a standard Twitter retweet, $100 to $150 for a quote tweet, and $150 for a tweet or a post to his Instagram feed. But everything is negotiable based on time: A post that's live for only three hours will be much cheaper than one left up for 48 hours. He currently has 33,000 followers on Instagram and more than 80,000 on Twitter."

Word count: 117 words
Average sentence length: 23 words (26, 20, 32, 26, 13)
Words with 3+ syllables: 5 percent (6/117 words)
Fog Index: (23+5) *.4 = 11 (11.2, no rounding)

The Fog Index falls within ideal range -- i.e., below 12. The writing fares well in both component scores: sentence length and percentage of longer words. If we wanted to reduce the score even more, we might split up the first and fourth sentences. We might be able to replace a few longer words too. But neither of these things is necessary here. The paragraph is heavy with figures, but the author breaks them up into digestible parts: The reader has several chances to take a breath between sentences. The longer words are necessary, not ornamental. So there isn't much to do here but sit back and enjoy the read.

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