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Subject:Re: Flesch Indexes From:"Brown, David W [RV]" <dwb3 -at- PO9 -dot- RV -dot- UNISYS -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 12 Oct 1994 10:32:00 CDT
The way I understand them, the Flesch Index and the Gunning Fog Index are
readability tests.
The Flesch Index is calculated by counting the number of words in a sentence
and the number of syllables in the words. A reading grade-level (say 10th
grade, high school for example) would then be assigned. I think some
military manuals are required to be written to a certain reading grade level
and the Flesch Index is used to determine it.
The Gunning Fog Index, as I understand it, is a test where you would take a
paragraph and remove words from the paragraph and replace them with blank
lines, and then a reader would be asked to supply the missing words (fill in
the blank lines). The goal would be to write clear paragraphs so that it
would be obvious to the reader what the missing words are by reading the
rest of the paragraph.
