How to make a point.

Here is a link to an interesting article by Lee Drutman entitled Is Congress getting dumber, or just more plainspoken? http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/05/21/grade-level-congress/

The premise is of the article is simple: Examine speeches using the using the Flesch-Kincaid test and see what happens. I want to point out that Flesh-Kincaid equates higher grade levels with longer words and longer sentences.

According to the results at the above link Congress is speaking at a 10.6 grade level down from an 11.5 level in 2005.

MS Word includes a Flesh-Kincaid analysts in its tools. I took a few book/author samples and tested them. I grant this is a small sample but I think it has some “tough reading” in it from a diverse group of English language writers.

Martin Eden – Jack London – 3.8

As I lay Dying – William Faulkner – 4.8

Treasure Island – Robert Lewis Stevenson – 2.0

Paradise Lost – John Milton – 3.4

Ulysses – James Joyce – 2.7

Bleak House – Charles Dickens – 4.5

The Winter of Our Discontent – John Steinbeck – 2.7

Based on my sampling it looks like it might be more important to say something meaningful that everyone can understand than worry about vocabulary and sentence length.

(I wanted to slip obfuscate into my comment up there somewhere but I use Open Office now so I can't check to see if it would have helped my Flesh-Kincaid rating.)

George W. Parker