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Don't waste your time or Web bandwidth. Here's a simplified summary of what
they said: Calculate the average number of words per sentence; calculate the
proportion of the words that are longer than or equal to three syllables;
add these two figures (yes, you mix a % with numerals... sheesh); multiply
the result by 0.4 to get the Fog Index.
Want to know how useful that is in determining readability? Take the exact
same sentences, but now spend about 15 minutes swapping comparably long
words between sentences, then changing their orders in the sentences until
you produce something that no human being could ever possibly understand, or
(better still) that carries the exact opposite meaning from the original
text. Calculate the Fog Index again. Funny coincidence: you get the same
index, even though the second text is incomprehensible.
I think this speaks eloquently about the value of any simplistic numeric
readability index that doesn't involve an analysis of the semantic content
of the text.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
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