atw: Readability statistics: is anyone expected to meet a particular Flesch score?

Re Flesch. I don't think it is a problem for people to count their sentence lengths occasionally - because many people are not aware of how long their sentences are. Problems arise if you try to relate the Flesch Fog figure to reading/educational level, or writing level, with any accuracy or set values. Technical writing gives an inflated FI anyway because of the long technical words we must use. Use it yourself, as a check every so often, if you are trying to reduce your sentence length and word complexity. If the FI is lowering then obviously your sentence length is improving and/or your complex words are being replaced by simpler ones. I often recommend this to new writers, who all seem very comfortable with the concept of counting sentence length. You must count your own sentences to get the full value from this exercise - not just get the FI figure from a machine. 
Jill

Jill Nicholson
N&H Communications
2 Park Ave
ROSEVILLE,  NSW 2069
61+2+94174302
jpnicho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.nhcommunications.com.au
----- Original Message ----- From: "Allan Charlton" <allancharlton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 8:33 PM
Subject: atw: Re: Readability statistics: is anyone expected to meet a particular Flesch score?
It was part of the writing life at Unisys, but I believe they ditched Flesch in the mid-90s. 

Allan


Geoffrey Marnell wrote:
Fellow writers, A few years ago, on some forum or other, I read that some employers of technical writers expected their writers to always meet or better a particular Flesch readability score.<snip> 
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