Re: style

[Louis N Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis:

Check out Neil Postman's "Entertaining Ourselves to Death" for an
interesting discussion of the level of literacy between now and
mid-century in the 1800s. He points out that the masses followed the
Lincoln-Douglas debates with intense interest and would read the
transcripts in newspapers as soon as they appeared. Postman blames
television. So do I. I recall my parents listening to the radio before we
got our first tv. They subscribed to at least 6 magazines and read 2
newspapers a day, the liberal NY Post in the evening. The magazines of
the time, like Colliers, Look and Saturday Evening Post, would feature
short stories by Faulkner.

Also, it is interesting that when I run one of my longer pieces through
the grammar-checker, I find that it usually chokes on anything written by
Lenin or Marx, even at their most popular! I wouldn't assume that Marx
and Lenin's impact was made directly on the masses. It is more likely
that they influenced socialist mass leaders who then conveyed their
thoughts to the masses in a more popular fashion. I have a feeling that
people like Debs and Malcolm X would break fewer "style" rules.


On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Doug Henwood wrote:

> 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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>
>
>
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