style

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

Louis recommended that Juan Inigo run his prose through Microsoft Word's
Grammar Checker. Out of curiosity, I ran Marx's 1848 speech on free trade -
to the International Workingmen's [sic] Association - through that very
module (which runs painfully slowly in native code on my Power Mac, by the
way). Here's what we have:

sentences per paragraph          1.94 (under Louis' 4 max)
words per sentence              23.14 (violates Louis' 20 max)
chars per word                   4.66 (no Proyect standard published)

Now how about this nonsense:

Flesch Reading Ease             58.63 (0-100 scale; 60-70 "standard writing")

grade levels
------------
  Flesch-Kincaid                 9.91
  Coleman-Liau                  13.38
  Bormuth                       10.90

According to early 1980s Dept of Education surveys, less than 20% of the US
population reads at a 12th grade level or better. According to Microsoft,
the Flesch-Kincaid score of "standard writing" is 7-8 (i.e., comprehensible
to a 7th or 8th grader in the US system).

So, which is it, this wonderful speech on free trade - 10-11th grade, well
above the Flesch-Kincaid "standard," or a couple of years of college, as
Coleman-Liau contend, restricting Marx's potential audience to well under
20% of the US population?

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
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