I once had a boss who told me that being a good Detective wasn’t enough. He went on to explain that to be successful as an Investigator in almost any field, one had to possess sound business knowledge, and above all, one must be a skilled writer. In essence, he was telling me that the job wasn’t done until the paperwork was finished.
He was right, of course, though it took me some time to realize the magnitude of what he had imparted. I soon learned that preparing an effective presentation of one’s findings offers up many challenges, and unfortunately, my mentor was no longer there to help me.
It was apparent that high school and college had not prepared me as a writer. Off I went to the library where I read many books on grammar and style. Off to college I went for courses on business and non-fiction writing.
After all this I had the misfortune to work for an investigation company headed by a person who had difficulty writing at the grade nine level. His idea of good communication consisted of long poorly structured sentences in long poorly structured paragraphs. To make matters worse, he demanded everybody in his employ to emulate his reporting style.
The reader could easily determine what events had transpired, but reading the report was a labour that few clients enjoyed. To this day, clients routinely call the investigators for a verbal account of their findings rather than read the report.
Over twenty years later, we enjoy wonderful tools like MS Word. But do we write any better? I don’t think so, mainly, because the people who have difficulty don’t use all the helpful tools available to them.
For example, systems designed to measure the clarity and precision of any piece of writing have existed since the Talmudic priests in the 10th century employed a readability formula which calculated ordinary and abstract meanings using word and idea tallies. These calculations developed because the priests were concerned that their meanings should be clearly and precisely understood. Today, we have Gunning’s Fog Index, or the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level calculations built into word processors. Each of these tests judge readability by the number of syllables for each word and the length of the sentence. The larger the number of syllables, the longer the sentence, the less readable a text is judged to be.
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level system is used in MS Word. The Readability Grade Level (RGL) can be found by using the following formula:
(words per sentence X .4) + (syllables per word X 12) – 16 = RGL. Of course the formula does not ensure that the sentence makes any sense to the reader. Rearranging the words of a sentence into unintelligible gibberish will give the same score as a readable sentence.
The target audience determines allowable RGL. Maximum RGL should never be over 12. Comfortable reading is usually in the 7-10 level for most people.
A “good” score may not mean much. However, a “bad” score flags a passage with too many long words and sentences. Most writing can be improved by eliminating both.
As the RGL is a statistic, it should be used with some caution. In 1953 Robert A. Dufour applied the Flesch formula to some literature and found, for example, that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was half again as hard as Plato’s Republic. Helpful as it is, the RGL numbers should not bring about a suspension of reason and common sense.
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