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> The Persuader Blog |
1.8.06 Clearing the Fog There are a few services out there on the web that analyse blogs, not least Mapstats that I had mentioned last month. While being frustrated with Kinja—some service which doesn’t seem to be able to crawl this site or add others efficiently—I noted a link to a readability analysis tool from Juicy Studio.For those wondering how good their writing is, this site is an excellent resource. I discovered the following about this blog, copied and pasted from Juicy Studio’s site: Total sentences: 1,387 Total words: 12,946 Average words per sentence: 9·33 Words with one syllable: 8,736 Words with two syllables: 2,495 Words with three syllables: 1,144 Words with four or more syllables: 571 Percentage of word with three or more syllables: 13·25% Average syllables per word: 1·50 Gunning Fog Index: 9·03 Flesch Reading Ease: 70·31 Flesch-Kincaid Grade: 5·77 The last three figures are the party trick for this tool. Gunning Fog details how many years of education one might need before reading this blog, with 17 being the highest score (a postgrad). A score of 9·03 puts this blog around the same level as a popular novel. The Flesch Reading Ease score is based on an index of 0 to 100, and the higher the score, the easier this blog is to read. I would say 70·31 is not too bad here, considering there are specialist topics from time to time. Finally, the Flesch–Kincaid Grade also suggests how many years of education one requires in order to read this blog—which puts this at a fifth- or sixth-grade level. For those who have some writing online, Juicy Studio’s tool could be very useful. For me, I am glad that my rough target—that this blog has some smart things to say, but retains its accessibility—seems to be confirmed by the figures. Posted by Jack Yan, 13:03  
Comments:
Jack, what a fun post -- and it says it all! Thanks. You'd enjoy one of my favorite all time books on this topic. "How to Take the Fog out of Writing" by Robert Gunning. It's ancient ... 1964... and was given to me in 1988 by Hal Lawrence a best selling author who's no longer with us. Hal wrote much like you do, and your blog today brought back his memory!
Thank you for the reference, Ellen—and I am honoured to be compared with your friend! I must check out his writing style!
Hmmmm....this seems pretty interesting, I will have to check that out. You always refer some of the best resources out there. Some of the sources I use are because of you. No, really!
Thanks, Blackops! I thought this was a fun one, too, and I hadn’t seen it on another blog before. Usually I am the first guy to see a joke on email, for instance, so if it is new to me, I figure others might find it new, too.
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Ellen, meanwhile, I did check on Hal’s writing. I could only find one excerpt from a site discussing his experience in World War II and there were some similarities in our style. However, I am nowhere near Hal in life experience—it was pretty amazing to read of his work. Links to this post:
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NoteEntries from 2006 to the end of 2009 were done on the Blogger service. As of January 1, 2010, this blog has shifted to a Wordpress installation, with the latest posts here.With Blogger ceasing to support FTP publishing on May 1, I have decided to turn these older pages in to an archive, so you will no longer be able to enter comments. However, you can comment on entries posted after January 1, 2010. Quick links Add feeds
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