READABILITY TESTS(1): GUNNING FOG INDEX

Readability tests and fog indices are a deciding factor as to how far your writing or publication goes. If you’re a student, copywriter or twitter user you will definitely find this useful in boosting engagements with your tweets, conversion rate of your sales copy and your grades in class.

I decided to not publish the second part of ‘’The social Media Emotions’’ because it doesn’t exactly fit blog content and the analysis of how it relates to Copywriting goes in depth into the intricacies of Advertising and Marketing strategy. Till my book release you can read on SLOMO and BROMO to know more about these anxieties. In the mean time let’s ensure your texts are readable and you achieve communication with every text message you send out. In this article, I’ll give you a brief history of the gunning fog index and Flesch–Kincaid readability tests, how to calculate and apply these standards appropriately so let’s get right into it.

What is a Readability test?

According to wikipedia”Readability tests, readability formulas, or readability metrics are formulae for evaluating the readability of text, usually by counting syllables, words, and sentences. Readability tests are often used as an alternative to conducting an actual statistical survey of human readers of the subject text (a readability survey).” Generally speaking, readability tests are used to evaluate the readability of texts,applying mathematical calculations to give a rough indication of a work’s readability by a particular audience. The idea is, some words are above a particular audience’s readability and in any case the reader finds it harder to read the entire text, based on how many of these words appear in the text. These words are easily characterized by multi-syllables and multiple meaning. Fog index serve as a proxy for understanding the readers ability to read and assimilate texts in place of actual statistical survey, and scores are compared with scales, based on reading grade level.

 CALCULATING THE GUNNING FOG INDEX

To get the fog index of your texts, work out the average number of words per sentence in your text. You can do this by dividing the number of words by the number of sentences in a couple of paragraphs. (Independent clauses such as ‘’The time for words is over, now action is needed’’ count as separate sentences). Count up the number of words in the same section of text that have three syllables or more (ignore proper names), add the two figures together and multiply the sum by 0.4 to get your fog index… I know this might seem a little complicated so here’s a diagram:

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HERE’S WHY EVERYONE NEEDS THIS…

Ever heard the saying ‘’You can never win an ignoramus in an argument’’ (I made that up hahaha) but yeah you can’t because he wouldn’t even understand the basis of your points and argument, that doesn’t make you any dumber you’re just playing on the wrong field and leveling the playing ground means coming down to their level literally.

I started writing copy for a British audience who are native speakers, transitioning to an African market was quite challenging and I’m still fine tuning my writing style for my new, bigger audience. Here’s a scale of reading grade level that should guide your fog index when writing for any audience.

Fog Index	Reading level by grade
17	College graduate
16	College senior
15	College junior
14	College sophomore
13	College freshman
12	High school senior
11	High school junior
10	High school sophomore
9	High school freshman
8	Eighth grade
7	Seventh grade
6	Sixth grade

What you’re doing is making sure after calculating your fog index it is just exactly or slightly less (unless you’re writing for a professional class audience.) than the fog index of your reader.

NB: Not all complex words are difficult. For example, “interesting” is not generally thought to be a difficult word, although it has three syllables (after omitting the common -ing suffix). A short word can be difficult if it is not used very often by most people. The frequency with which words are in normal use affects the readability of text so it’s important to use frequently used words to keep a good fog index.

YOUR TURN!

Join me next week to discover the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. Fancy being in a community of copywriters? Click here to join my Copy Squad See you next week!