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

["Harris, Michael" <Michael -dot- Harris -at- innocon -dot- com>]

I have written technical documentation for both military and civilian
applications for many years.  My journey into technical writing began
when I was a young Electronics Technician in the Navy seeking
understandable documentation.  It didn't take long to realize that most
technical documentation I found was either written by Engineers who knew
the material, but could not make it understandable for the intended
audience - the uneducated technician, or by Journalists who knew how to
make the documentation look nice, but from a user's standpoint it was
completely useless.  When I worked in the Slot Machine business (every
industry needs writers), I found that most writers felt that they were
'above' the lowly technicians.  

As I recall, the US Navy's required readability is at the 8th Grade
level, whereas the US Army's is 6th Grade, at least for manuals used in
the field.  There is very good justification for writing to these basic
levels.  Generally speaking, most college-educated people in the
military are officers (or managers, in the civilian world), who don't
read technical manuals.  It is the grunt labor force that needs to know
how to fix things.   

The Flesch-Kincaid Readability indicator, part of MS Word, gives the
writer a good indication as to how basic their thoughts are when put
into writing.   

Michael Harris
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