Writing clarity and the Fog Index
The Gunning-Fog Index is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content of a document. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to the reader.
1 is primary school age where 17 is post-graduate level
My blog scores a rating of 7.55 (considered very good - easy to read)
I have run the test on several newspapers’ sites and they all seem to score within this range (almost all were under 12)
Typical Fog Index Scores
6 TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 Reader’s Digest
8 - 10 Most popular novels
10 Time, Newsweek
11 Wall Street Journal
14 The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20 Academic papers
Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can’t ignore them.
Over 30 The government is covering something up
stats taken from JuicyStudio.com
