Clear Your Written Fog
How glowing is your prose? Once you’ve spent ages over your latest Proposal, is it actually readable?
You can easily and quickly check. I was reminded recently of the Fog Index.
Impressively, the wikipedia page on this is unusually digestible. Which must be a good sign. Perhaps it is deliberate that the only item requiring a double-take is the maths formula to graphically represent it.
But don’t let that put you off. Follow the worked-through examples.
Then simply copy ‘n paste just over 100 words from your latest writings and run the test yourself.
In summary;
- Divide the number of words by the number of sentences to find the average number of words per sentence.
- Then count the number of words with three or more syllables (don’t include proper names, verb endings like –ing and separate hyphenated words).
- Add the average number of words per sentence to the total number of long words, and multiply by 0.4.
- If you come out between 9-12 on this Fog Index you are a reasonably clear communicator. If you exceed 12, you need to change your approach.