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Check
your Fog Index
To write clearly and well, generally use
short words and
short sentences.
To
check your own clarity in writing: |
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| 1. |
Count how many words you use in an average
sentence. |
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| 2. |
To do that, check any 100 words you have
written, in a report or letter. |
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| 3. |
Divide that 100 by the number of sentences
used. |
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| 4. |
Then count how many "complex" words
you have used for every 100 words you have written (a "complex" word is one with
three syllables or more - not counting words with capital letters). |
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| 5. |
Add the two totals together, and then take four
tenths of the total. That is your Fog Index. |
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For example: if you average 20
words to a sentence, and ten complex words in every 100 words, your total is 30.
Four-tenths of this is 12. That is your Fog Index. |
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Readers Digest has a Fog Index of
between 8 and 9. Time magazine is about 11. If you're higher than 13 you're hard
to read. Churchill's quote below has a Fog Index of 3.2. Except when quoting others, The
Learning Revolution has a Fog Index between 8 and 10. |
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"We shall go on to the end. We shall fight
in France. We shall fight in the seas and oceans. We shall fight on the beaches, in the
fields, in the streets, and in the hills. We shall never surrender." (Winston
Churchill) |
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*Joseph Peart and Jim R. McNamara, in The
New Zealand Handbook of Public Relations, published by Mills Publications, Lower
Hutt, New Zealand (1987), attribute the invention of the Fog Index to Robert Gunning, an
American businessman.
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